In vivo validation of a novel semi-automated method for border detection in intravascular ultrasound images

The aim of this work was to evaluate a new semi-automated intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) border detection method. The method was used to identify the lumen and the external elastic membrane or the borders of stents in 80 IVUS images, randomly selected from 10 consecutive human coronary arteries. These semi-automated results were compared with observations of two experts. Several indices in each case were obtained in order fully to evaluate the method. The time required for identification of the borders was also recorded. The interobserver variability of the method ranged from 1.21% to 5.61%, the correlation coefficient from 0.98 to 0.99, the slope was close to unity (0.94-1.03), the y intercept close to zero and the Williams index value was close to unity (range 0.67-0.91). The time (mean+/-SD) required for the method to identify the borders of the different vessel layers for the whole IVUS sequence was 5.2+/-0.2 min. The results demonstrate that the method is reliable and capable of identifying rapidly and accurately the different vessel layers depicted in IVUS images.