Aorta Centerline Extraction
A MATLAB script to extract the centerline of an given thoracic aorta segmentation (guided by clinical practices).
Aortic Centerline Extraction
Overview
This MATLAB script automates the extraction of the aortic centerline and computes stepwise maximal diameters along the aortic arch, based on the algorithm described by Bramlet et al. in Journal of Medical Imaging 11(3):034503 (2024).

Reference
Bramlet, M., Mohamadi, S., Srinivas, J., Dassanayaka, T., Okammor, T., Shadden, M., & Sutton, B. P. (2024). Automating aortic cross-sectional measurement of 3D aorta models. Journal of Medical Imaging, 11(3), 034503. DOI: 10.1117/1.JMI.11.3.034503
Features
- Automatic centerline initialization and tracking from diaphragm to aortic root
- Wobble-based plane angle search to identify minimal cross-sectional areas
- Computation of maximal diameters at each step along the centerline
Requirements
- MATLAB R2021a or later
- Image Processing Toolbox
Installation
-
Clone or download this repository:
git clone https://github.com/username/aortic-centerline.git
-
Add the script directory to your MATLAB path:
addpath(genpath('path/to/aortic-centerline'));
Usage
- Prepare your 3D aorta segmentation as an NIFTI file.
- Edit the parameters and filepath of the segmentation in the main script.
Input
- 3D Segmentation: NIFTI of the thoracic aorta segmentation.
- Parameters: Step size, wobble angle maximum, and maximum steps.
Output
-
ctr
stores the points of the calculated centerline -
dmd
stores the diameter measurements flood-filled in each step.
License
This project is distributed under the MIT License.