POLYNOMIAL-BASED BOUNDARY EXTRACTION OF PLAQUE IN INTRAVASCULAR ULTRASOUND IMAGE BY USING ITS LOCAL STATISTICAL INFORMATION

In this paper, we propose a novel boundary extraction method for a plaque in an intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) image. In the present method, a plaque boundary is approximated by a polynomial series. The coefficients of the series are determined not only by the information of the seed points but also by the local statistical information of the IVUS image. The present method achieves a quick, precise and noise-robust extrac- tion of a plaque boundary using a very small number of seed points. The validity and the effectiveness of the present method are confirmed by applying it to the practical boundary extraction problem of a plaque. Keywords: Acute coronary syndromes (ACS), Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), Bound- ary extraction, Local statistics, Polynomial interpolation