How to Extract part of Image using Matlab

i have not used matlab much, i need to extract the part of Left and Right Coronary Arteries of a heart from a given heart image.

this is my image,

based on morphological operations, this is what i have come up with,

f=imread('heart.jpg');
diam=strel('diamond',19);
line=strel('line',10,90);
linef=imclose(f,line);
line120=strel('line',10,120);
line120f= imclose(f,line120);
bothline=linef+line120f;
diamf=imclose(f,diam);
arterybm=diamf-bothline;
binaryartery= im2bw(arterybm,0);
mask=cast(binaryartery,class(f));
redPlane=f(:,:,1);
greenPlane=f(:,:,2);
bluePlane=f(:,:,3);
maskedRed=redPlane.*mask;
maskedGreen=greenPlane.*mask;
maskedBlue=bluePlane.*mask;
maskedRGBImage=cat(3,maskedRed,maskedGreen,maskedBlue);
subplot(2,3,1);imshow(f);title('Input Image');subplot(2,3,2);imshow(diamf);title('imclose with Diamond Mask');subplot(2,3,3);imshow(bothline);title('imclose with Line 120 and 90 mask');subplot(2,3,4);imshow(arterybm);title('Difference of line and diamond');subplot(2,3,5);imshow(binaryartery);title('Convert to binary image');subplot(2,3,6);imshow(maskedRGBImage);title('Apply mask to input image');

is there any better approach ?

This task is quite a difficult one, worth academic article if you find solution working flawlessly in most cases. My suggestion: search for articles on the topic, and also try "Matlab File Exchange" (http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/). If you are very lucky, someone might have already solved this problem and posted a solution.