Analysis of Carotid Plaque Using Multifractal method in Ultrasound Images

This paper analyses the non-linear parameters of the plaque in carotid B-mode ultrasound images. In this work an attempt has been made to differentiate textural features of the symptomatic and asymptomatic plaque by multifractal method. The fractal dimension represents irregularity and hence the fractal nature. The interwoven sets of singularities are characterized by its own scaling behaviour, quantitatively represented as the fractal dimension, explains the multifractal behavior. The multifractal characteristics are plotted using a multifractal formalism proposed by Halsey. Certain multifractal features are extracted namely bandwidth (BW) of the spectrum and singularity exponent peak (SXP_peak). These extracted features have coefficient of variation in the range of 0.1 to 0.3; hence they have lower inter-subject variability. This analysis could aid in the study of the symptomatic and asymptomatic plaques.