Chiu Bernard, Egger Micaela, Spence J David, Parraga Grace, Fenster Aaron
Imaging Research Laboratories and Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Med Phys. 2008 Aug;35(8):3691-710. doi: 10.1118/1.2955550.
Quantitative measurements of carotid plaque burden progression or regression are important in monitoring patients and in evaluation of new treatment options. 3D ultrasound (US) has been used to monitor the progression or regression of carotid artery plaques. This paper reports on the development and application of a method used to analyze changes in carotid plaque morphology from 3D US. The technique used is evaluated using manual segmentations of the arterial wall and lumen from 3D US images acquired in two imaging sessions. To reduce the effect of segmentation variability, segmentation was performed five times each for the wall and lumen. The mean wall and lumen surfaces, computed from this set of five segmentations, were matched on a point-by-point basis, and the distance between each pair of corresponding points served as an estimate of the combined thickness of the plaque, intima, and media (vessel-wall-plus-plaque thickness or VWT). The VWT maps associated with the first and the second US images were compared and the differences of VWT were obtained at each vertex. The 3D VWT and VWT-Change maps may provide important information for evaluating the location of plaque progression in relation to the localized disturbances of flow pattern, such as oscillatory shear, and regression in response to medical treatments.
颈动脉斑块负荷进展或消退的定量测量对于监测患者和评估新的治疗方案非常重要。三维超声（US）已被用于监测颈动脉斑块的进展或消退。本文报道了一种用于分析三维超声中颈动脉斑块形态变化的方法的开发与应用。所使用的技术通过对在两个成像时段采集的三维超声图像中的动脉壁和管腔进行手动分割来评估。为了减少分割变异性的影响，对壁和管腔分别进行了五次分割。从这组五次分割计算得到的平均壁面和管腔表面逐点匹配，每对对应点之间的距离用作斑块、内膜和中膜（血管壁加斑块厚度或VWT）组合厚度的估计值。比较与第一张和第二张超声图像相关的VWT图，并在每个顶点获得VWT的差异。三维VWT和VWT变化图可能为评估斑块进展位置与局部血流模式紊乱（如振荡剪切）的关系以及对药物治疗的消退情况提供重要信息。
