Atherosclerotic carotid plaque segmentation
Date
2004Author


Istepanian, Robert Sh Habib

Nicolaïdes, Andrew N.
Source
Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology - ProceedingsConference Proceedings - 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2004
Volume
26 IIPages
1403-1406Google Scholar check
Keyword(s):
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Show full item recordAbstract
Atherosclerosis is the major cause of heart attack and stroke in the western world. In this paper we present a computerized method for segmenting the athrerosclerotic carotid plaque from ultrasound images. The method uses the blood flow image first to detect the initial contour of the plaque, and then despeckle filtering and snakes to deform the initial contour for best fit of plaque boundaries. The accuracy and reproducibility of this method was tested using 35 longitudinal ultrasound images of carotid arteries and the results were compared with the manual delineations of an expert. The comparison showed that the computerized method gives satisfactory results with no manual correction needed in most of the cases. The true positive fraction, TPF, true negative fraction, TNF, false negative fraction, FNF and false positive fraction, FPF, were 86.44%, 84.03%, 8.5%, and 7% respectively.