Correction for simultaneous catheter eccentricity and tilt in intravascular elastography

Intravascular elastography can provide significant new information about the elastic properties of vascular tissue and plaque, useful for the diagnosis of disease and appropriate selection of interventional methods. Knowledge of the plaque composition, vulnerability and its elastic properties can assist the clinician in selecting appropriate interventional techniques. However, several noise sources have to be addressed to obtain quality intravascular elastograms. Misalignment of the vessel lumen and the ultrasound beam can produce erroneous strain estimates in elastography. Errors in the strain estimate are introduced due to the eccentricity and tilt of the intravascular transducer within the vessel lumen. Previous work in this area has provided theoretical expressions for the correction of eccentricity and tilt errors when they occur independent of each other. However, under most imaging conditions, both eccentricity and tilt errors are simultaneously present. In this paper, we extend the theoretical correction factor by accounting for the influence of both of these errors occurring simultaneously in the positioning of the catheter within the vessel lumen.