LUMEN SEGMENTATION IN INTRAVASCULAR ULTRASOUND DATA

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is a catheter-based medical imaging technique that is capable of producing high resolution cross-sectional images of interior of blood vessels and it is currently the gold standard technique for the study of the characteristics of the atherosclerotic plaques. Segmentation of IVUS images refers to the delineation of the lumen/ intima and media/adventitia interfaces of the vessel. This process is necessary for assessing morphological characteristics of the vessel such as lumen diameter, minimum lumen cross-section area, and total atheroma volume. This information is crucial for making decisions such as whether a stent is needed to restore blood flow in an artery and to determine the characteristics of the stent. Other applications of IVUS include the study of mechanical properties of the vessel wall, characteristics of the plaque, and 3D reconstruction of the vessel. Segmentation of IVUS images may be performed manually by an observer. However, depending on the type of analysis, the number of frames to be segmented can range from a few frames to hundreds of frames. In this dissertation, we present a unified computational method for the semi-automatic segmentation of the luminal/wall interface in IVUS data. The method can be used with either B-mode or RF-data and it is based on the deformation of a curve by optimizing a probabilistic cost function. The main contribution is the development of a physicsbased inverse method for the segmentation of the lumen employing the IVUS RF data as compared with previous method which employs the B-mode reconstruction. Experimental results demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of the method. These results pave the way for the automation of the analysis of contrast-enhanced IVUS images to assess extraluminal perfusion.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Mendizabal Ruiz, Eduardo 1980-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kakadiaris, Ioannis A.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Shah, Shishir Kirit
• Vilalta, Ricardo
• Papadakis, Emanuel I.
• Biros, George

• Ultrasound
• Intravascular Ultrasound
• Cardiovascular diseases
• Segmentation

Statement dc:rights

• The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10657/823

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/823