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Updated: May 28, 2026
Blood Flow Imaging with Ultrafast Doppler
Published on: October 14, 2020
Towards extra-luminal blood detection from intravascular ultrasound radio frequency data
E Gerardo Mendizabal-Ruiz1, George Biros, Ioannis A Kakadiaris
1Computational Biomedicine Lab, Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
Insights
Detecting vasa vasorum (VV) in plaque may indicate inflammation and vulnerability. This study explores using intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) signals to detect blood, potentially identifying plaque instability and reducing heart attack risks.
Area of Science:
- Cardiovascular Research
- Medical Imaging Technology
- Biomedical Engineering
Background:
- Vasa vasorum (VV) proliferation in atherosclerotic plaques correlates with inflammation and destabilization.
- VV presence is linked to acute coronary events, highlighting the need for vulnerability assessment.
- Detecting and quantifying VV offers a potential index for plaque vulnerability.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the feasibility of a physics-based model for detecting blood using intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) signals.
- To develop a method for automatic extra-luminal blood detection as an indicator of plaque inflammation.
- To assess the potential of IVUS-based blood detection for identifying vulnerable plaques.
Main Methods:
- Employed a physics-based model analyzing scattered intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) radio frequency signals.
- Evaluated the method using synthetic data for initial assessment.
- Validated the approach with pullback sequences from rabbit and swine arteries using multiple IVUS systems.
Main Results:
- Experimental results demonstrate promising feasibility for the proposed method.
- The method enables computation of a feature for automatic extra-luminal blood detection.
- Findings indicate a potential link between detected blood and plaque inflammation.
Conclusions:
- The developed IVUS-based method shows feasibility for detecting extra-luminal blood.
- This detection may serve as a valuable indicator of plaque inflammation and vulnerability.
- Further development could lead to improved methods for assessing cardiovascular risk.
Abstract:
Recent evidence has suggested that the presence and proliferation of vasa vasorum (VV) in the plaque is correlated to an increase in plaque inflammation and destabilization, leading to acute coronary events (e.g., heart attacks). Therefore, the detection and quantification of VV in plaque (i.e., extra luminal blood perfusion) is an important problem since it may enable the development of an index of plaque vulnerability. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of a method that employs a physics-based model of the scattered intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) radio frequency signal for the detection of blood. We evaluate our method using synthetic data and validate it using six 40 MHz pullback sequences acquired with three different IVUS systems from different arteries of rabbits and swines. Our experimental results are very promising and indicate the feasibility of our method for the computation of a feature that leads to automatic extra-luminal blood detection which may be an indication of plaque inflammation.
