4D Vessel Reconstruction for Benchtop Thrombectomy Analysis

2026-04-08

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of time-resolved, full-field three-dimensional measurement techniques for vascular deformation and procedural injury in mechanical thrombectomy experiments. The authors propose a low-cost, nine-camera multi-view system that, for the first time, employs 4D Gaussian splatting to reconstruct dynamic surface geometry in a silicone middle cerebral artery model. Regional displacements are tracked using a fixed-connectivity edge graph, and a Neo-Hookean constitutive model is leveraged to compute a proxy metric for relative surface stress. This approach enables standardized, time-resolved quantification of vascular kinematics and stress, facilitating quantitative comparisons across different procedural conditions. Synthetic validation demonstrates displacement reconstruction accuracy of 0.964–0.972 and Chamfer distances of 1.714–1.815 mm. Preliminary benchtop experiments indicate that catheter insertion during carotid aspiration thrombectomy induces greater displacement and stress responses.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Motion & Tracking
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Introduction: Mechanical thrombectomy can cause vessel deformation and procedure-related injury. Benchtop models are widely used for device testing, but time-resolved, full-field 3D vessel-motion measurements remain limited. Methods: We developed a nine-camera, low-cost multi-view workflow for benchtop thrombectomy in silicone middle cerebral artery phantoms (2160p, 20 fps). Multi-view videos were calibrated, segmented, and reconstructed with 4D Gaussian Splatting. Reconstructed point clouds were converted to fixed-connectivity edge graphs for region-of-interest (ROI) displacement tracking and a relative surface-based stress proxy. Stress-proxy values were derived from edge stretch using a Neo-Hookean mapping and reported as comparative surface metrics. A synthetic Blender pipeline with known deformation provided geometric and temporal validation. Results: In synthetic bulk translation, the stress proxy remained near zero for most edges (median $\approx$ 0 MPa; 90th percentile 0.028 MPa), with sparse outliers. In synthetic pulling (1-5 mm), reconstruction showed close geometric and temporal agreement with ground truth, with symmetric Chamfer distance of 1.714-1.815 mm and precision of 0.964-0.972 at $τ= 1$ mm. In preliminary benchtop comparative trials (one trial per condition), cervical aspiration catheter placement showed higher max-median ROI displacement and stress-proxy values than internal carotid artery terminus placement. Conclusion: The proposed protocol provides standardized, time-resolved surface kinematics and comparative relative displacement and stress proxy measurements for thrombectomy benchtop studies. The framework supports condition-to-condition comparisons and methods validation, while remaining distinct from absolute wall-stress estimation. Implementation code and example data are available at https://ethanuser.github.io/vessel4D

Problem

• 4D vessel reconstruction
• mechanical thrombectomy
• vessel deformation
• benchtop models
• 3D motion measurement

Innovation

• 4D Gaussian Splatting
• multi-view reconstruction
• vessel deformation
• stress proxy
• benchtop thrombectomy