title: Automatic classification of atherosclerotic plaques imaged with intravascular OCT.
abstract: Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) allows evaluation of atherosclerotic plaques; however, plaque characterization is performed by visual assessment and requires a trained expert for interpretation of the large data sets. Here, we present a novel computational method for automated IV-OCT plaque characterization. This method is based on the modeling of each A-line of an IV-OCT data set as a linear combination of a number of depth profiles. After estimating these depth profiles by means of an alternating least square optimization strategy, they are automatically classified to predefined tissue types based on their morphological characteristics. The performance of our proposed method was evaluated with IV-OCT scans of cadaveric human coronary arteries and corresponding tissue histopathology. Our results suggest that this methodology allows automated identification of fibrotic and lipid-containing plaques. Moreover, this novel computational method has the potential to enable high throughput atherosclerotic plaque characterization.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Jose J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Rico-Jimenez
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi, SLP, Mexico.
authors.forename: Daniel U
authors.initials: DU
authors.lastname: Campos-Delgado
authors.affiliation: Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Villiger
authors.affiliation: Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Kenichiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Otsuka
authors.affiliation: Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Brett E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Bouma
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Javier A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Jo
keywords: (100.2960) Image analysis; (100.5010) Pattern recognition; (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging; (170.4500) Optical coherence tomography; (170.6935) Tissue characterization