INTRAVASCULAR ULTRASOUND ELASTOGRAPHY IN HUMAN ARTERIES - INITIAL EXPERIENCE IN-VITRO

Intravascular elastography is a new technique to obtain the local mech anical properties of the vessel wall and its pathology using intravasc ular ultrasound (IVUS), Knowledge of these mechanical properties may b e useful for guiding interventional procedures, An experimental set-up is described for assessment of the strain data of arteries, Using a 3 0-MHz IVUS catheter, radio frequency data are acquired with a custom-m ade high-performance data acquisition system. High-resolution, local t issue displacement estimation by cross-correlation is followed by comp utation of local strain, An algorithm that uses a priori knowledge of the correlation coefficient function was applied to filter the obtaine d strain data, With this experimental set-up, intravascular elastogram s containing 400 angles/revolution with a radial resolution of 200 mu m can be produced. The feasibility of intravascular elastography with this experimental set-up is demonstrated using two diseased human femo ral arteries, Qualitative comparison of the elastograms with the echog rams and the histology demonstrates the potential of intravascular ela stography to obtain mechanical information from the vessel wall and fr om plaque. (C) 1998 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biol ogy.