Noninvasive carotid strain imaging using angular compounding at large beam steered angles: validation in vessel...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Medical Imaging
• Cardiovascular Research

Background:

• Atherosclerotic plaques rupture, leading to stroke and myocardial infarction.
• Ultrasound elastography shows potential for noninvasive plaque detection in carotid arteries.
• Current methods for deriving radial and circumferential strain from ultrasound data are limited by lateral strain accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To improve the accuracy of radial and circumferential strain estimation in ultrasound elastography.
• To enhance the detection of vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques.
• To overcome limitations of conventional strain derivation techniques.

Main Methods:

• Acquiring axial strain data at multiple insonification angles using a beam-steered linear array.
• Employing adaptive techniques to correct for artifacts during beam steering.
• Compounding high-quality axial strain segments aligned with radial and circumferential directions to form strain images.
• Utilizing principal component analysis or rotation matrix for data completion.

Main Results:

• Compound strain images demonstrated significantly improved image quality compared to 0-degree data alone.
• Elastographic signal-to-noise ratio (SNR(e)) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR(e)) increased by up to 2.7 and 6.6 dB, respectively.
• Highest image quality was achieved by projecting axial data combined with segments determined by PCA or rotation matrix.

Conclusions:

• Combining axial strain data from multiple angles effectively improves radial and circumferential strain estimation in ultrasound elastography.
• This enhanced technique offers superior image quality for detecting vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques.
• The developed method holds promise for more accurate noninvasive assessment of cardiovascular risk.