Cardiovascular Informatics: A Perspective on Promises and Challenges of IVUS Data Analysis

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is a catheter-based medical imaging modality that is capable of providing cross-sectional images of the interior of blood vessels. A comprehensive analysis of the IVUS data allows collecting information about the morphology and structure of the vessel and the atherosclerotic plaque, if present. Atherosclerotic plaque formation is considered to be a part of an inflammatory process. Recent evidence has suggested that the presence and proliferation of vasa vasorum (VV) in the plaque is correlated with the increase of plaque inflammation and the processes which lead to its destabilization. Hence, the detection and measurement of VV in plaque has the potential to enable the development of an index of plaque vulnerability. In this paper, we review the research at the Computational Biomedicine Lab towards the development of a complete pipeline for the detection and quantification of extra-luminal blood detection from IVUS data which may be an indication of the existence of VV.

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