[Ultrasound Simulation of Carotid Artery Plaque and System Implementation]

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering
• Acoustic Simulation

Background:

• Carotid artery plaques pose significant health risks, necessitating advanced diagnostic tools.
• Accurate simulation of plaque characteristics is crucial for understanding ultrasound imaging.
• Existing simulation methods may not fully capture the complexity of plaque morphology and acoustic properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and develop an effective ultrasonic simulation method for carotid artery plaque.
• To create a simulation system using FIELD II and MATLAB for enhanced plaque visualization.
• To validate the simulation's accuracy against clinical and preset data.

Main Methods:

• Developed a 3D geometric model of blood vessels with plaques using metaball implicit surface technique.
• Established a tissue model based on scatterers with spatial positions following a gamma random distribution.
• Utilized FIELD II software platform and MATLAB graphical user interface (GUI) for simulation and system development.

Main Results:

• The simulation system successfully generated realistic ultrasound B-mode images of carotid artery plaques.
• Statistical and geometrical characteristics of simulated images closely matched clinical data.
• The proposed method demonstrated high effectiveness in simulating plaque features.

Conclusions:

• The developed ultrasonic simulation method and system are effective for modeling carotid artery plaques.
• This approach provides a valuable tool for research and training in vascular ultrasound.
• Further advancements in simulation accuracy can aid in early plaque detection and characterization.