title: An IVUS image-based approach for improvement of coronary plaque characterization.
abstract: Virtual Histology-Intravascular Ultrasound (VH-IVUS) is widely used for studying atherosclerosis plaque composition. However, one of the main limitations of the VH-IVUS relates to its dependence to the Electrocardiogram (ECG)-gated acquisition. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a robust image-based approach for characterization of the plaques using IVUS images. The proposed method consists of three main steps of (1) shadow detection: as an efficient preprocessing step to identify and remove acoustic shadow regions; (2) feature extraction: a combination of gray-scale based features and textural descriptors; and (3) classification: to classify each pixel into one of the three classes (calcium, necrotic core and fibro-fatty). In order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm two in-vivo and ex-vivo data sets are considered. The kappa values of 0.639 on in-vivo and 0.628 on ex-vivo tests with VH-IVUS and the histology images labeled by the experts respectively indicate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
authors: Department of Computer Aided Medical Procedures (CAMP), Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany. taki@cs.tum.edu
authors: Arash
authors: A
authors: Taki
authors: Alireza
authors: A
authors: Roodaki
authors: Seyed Kamaledin
authors: SK
authors: Setarehdan
authors: Sara
authors: S
authors: Avansari
authors: Gozde
authors: G
authors: Unal
authors: Nassir
authors: N
authors: Navab
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000465:Algorithms; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D009336:Necrosis; D016011:Normal Distribution; D058226:Plaque, Atherosclerotic / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012984:Software; D018084:Ultrasonography, Interventional / Q000379:methods*