|
Among the top five of the ten major causes of death in the last
decade in Taiwan, there are two vascular diseases caused by
arteriosclerosis. Thus, arteriosclerosis has become a major
killer in recently. Atherosclerosis is one of the
arteriosclerosis. Its feature is the tissue accumulation in
vessel intima caused by deposited fat and cholesterol. In
clinics, angiogram and fiberoptic angioscope were applied to
diagnose the disease in the past, but both could not get the
vessel wall image. Therefore, it is neIntravascular ultrasound,
a newly developed technique, provides tomographic and cross-
sectional images of the vessel lumen and the vessel wall.
Boundary detection is crucial for tissue characterization in
IVUS images. The vessel contour can obtain by manually tracing
the image. However, it usually takes a lot of time, and the
interpreted tissue characterization is subjective of the image
observer. Thus, the first object of this study is to develop a
fast and subjective boundary search method and replace
theFifteen atherosclerotic patients* IVUS images were analyzed
in this study. The result of semi-automatic boundary detection
agree with those of maneal operator by the experienced operator(
r 0.93). This demonstrates the feasibility of the semi-automated
boundary detection in IVUS images. In addition, the energy
distribution on increased intimal thickness can be used to
locate the plaque on vessel wall and determine the progress of
calcified gravity of plaque. It might provide a valuable
diagnosis reference fo
|