ESTIMATION OF CORONARY ARTERIAL WALL STRAIN IN CLINICAL IVUS IMAGES

In this study, we propose a practical method to estimate cross-sectional wall strain distribution of coronary arteries from clinically acquired intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) images in continuous pullback mode. First, cardiac phase information is retrieved retrospectively from an IVUS image sequence using an image-based gating method, and image sub-sequences at systole and diastole are extracted. Images at branch sites are used as benchmarks to align the two image sub-sequences. Finally, the paired images at each site are registered to estimate the cross-sectional strain of the coronary artery.