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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
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