Enhanced characterization of calcified areas in intravascular ultrasound virtual histology images by quantification of the acoustic shadow: validation against computed tomography coronary angiography

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• 作者：Alexander Broersen ; Michiel A. de Graaf…
• 关键词：Quantitative CT angiography ; Plaque constitution ; Tissue characterization ; Acoustic shadow
• 刊名：The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging (formerly Cardiac Imaging)
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：April 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：32
• 期：4
• 页码：543-552
• 全文大小：1,421 KB
• 刊物类别：Medicine
• 刊物主题：Medicine & Public Health
  Cardiology
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0743

文摘

We enhance intravascular ultrasound virtual histology (VH) tissue characterization by fully automatic quantification of the acoustic shadow behind calcified plaque. VH is unable to characterize atherosclerosis located behind calcifications. In this study, the quantified acoustic shadows are considered calcified to approximate the real dense calcium (DC) plaque volume. In total, 57 patients with 108 coronary lesions were included. A novel post-processing step is applied on the VH images to quantify the acoustic shadow and enhance the VH results. The VH and enhanced VH results are compared to quantitative computed tomography angiography (QTA) plaque characterization as reference standard. The correlation of the plaque types between enhanced VH and QTA differs significantly from the correlation with unenhanced VH. For DC, the correlation improved from 0.733 to 0.818. Instead of an underestimation of DC in VH with a bias of 8.5 mm3, there was a smaller overestimation of 1.1 mm3 in the enhanced VH. Although tissue characterization within the acoustic shadow in VH is difficult, the novel algorithm improved the DC tissue characterization. This algorithm contributes to accurate assessment of calcium on VH and could be applied in clinical studies.