Noninvasive strain imaging and hemodynamic evaluation of atherosclerosis

Abstract

In this paper, a combined strategy for noninvasively measuring the carotid artery wall mechanics, the near wall shear rate (WSR) and the local pulse wave velocity (PWV) is presented. First, a combination of super-resolution reconstruction with the circumferential non-uniform correction for the artery wall is introduced before strain estimation to conquer the spatial limitation of ultrasound video images. Under the same imaging plane, with a beam-to-flow angle of 90, the blood velocity and shear rate distributions along the artery diameter can be reconstructed from the transverse Doppler spectra. Finally, the artery distension waveforms and local PWV of a 38 mm-length segment are calculated by the crosscorrelation method using plane wave ultrasound with a frame rate of 2000Hz. Preliminary results over 17 atherosclerosis patients demonstrate the feasibility of these methods. In conclusion, the current method can provide additional valuable results as a supplement to the current routine ultrasound examination for carotid atherosclerosis, thereby having significant potential as a feasible screening method for atherosclerosis diagnosis in the future.