Blood speed imaging with an intraluminal array.

In applications in which Doppler processing is not possible, such as side-looking intravascular imaging systems, decorrelation methods can be used to estimate blood speed. Here, a method is presented measuring relative blood speed using an FIR filter bank to estimate temporal decorrelation rates. It can be implemented in a modern commercially available ultrasound imaging system with no additional hardware.

Strain imaging of coronary arteries with intraluminal ultrasound: experiments on an inhomogeneous phantom.

In coronary arteries, knowing the relative stiffness of atherosclerotic lesions can help physicians select the most appropriate therapeutic modality. Because soft material supports larger strains than hard, measurements of this quantity can distinguish tissue of differing stiffness. In a previous paper, we described techniques for computing displacements and strains in coronary arteries using an integrated angioplasty and imaging catheter.

Experimental studies on an efficient catheter array imaging system.

A new synthetic aperture system for intraluminal imaging has been tested using a 32 element, 20 MHz circular array wrapped around the surface of a catheter appropriate for coronary artery applications. This system is based on an optimal reconstruction method that has been extended to reduce grating lobes using a slight modification to classic synthetic aperture data acquisition. Optimal reconstruction filters have been derived for two different operating modes based on this new data acquisition strategy.