ULTRASOUND APPEARANCES OF CORONARY STENTS AS OBTAINED BY 3-DIMENSIONAL INTRACORONARY ULTRASOUND IMAGING IN-VITRO

Intracoronary ultrasound (ICUS) is an imaging technique which can prov ide a cross-sectional image of coronary arteries and implanted stents. Different stents may have individual ICUS imaging characteristics. To investigate the imaging characteristics and three-dimensional (3-D) r econstruction of different coronary stent designs, we examined 26 diff erent stents using ICUS in vitro. All stents could be well visualized with planar ICUS. In 18 stents, 3-D imaging succeeded in reconstructin g the spatial stent architecture. This was not possible in the other 8 stents, most probably because of predominantly transversally-orientat ed strut architecture, the small size of the strut wire width, the lim ited ICUS lateral catheter resolution, and the smoothing and interpola tion algorithms applied for 3-D reconstruction. ICUS in vitro provides a means of identifying coronary stent structures which may be applica ble in vivo. Three-D reconstruction of the entire stent architecture i n vitro can be achieved in stents with mesh or slotted tube design, wh ile stents with coil design and thin strut wires can only be partially reconstructed.