Abstract
Carotid atherosclerosis is the most common life-threatening neurological disease and therefore an accurate assessment of atheromatous plaques is clinically important. Several studies were developed to characterize plaques from two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound images that are associated with high risk of stroke. However, 2D characterization may not be very accurate because it depends on the selection of a representative ultrasound image of the plaque by an experimented physician. In this paper we present a novel approach for diagnosis based on 3D ultrasound, which only requires a common ultrasound equipment without need of any additional and expensive devices like spatial locators. The semi-automatic algorithm uses medical guidance to obtain a 3D representation of the carotid artery and plaque and automatically generates measures to characterize the plaque in terms of dimensions and texture. A useful analysis tool is provided to allow the identification of vulnerable foci within the plaque.
This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (ISR/IST plurianual funding) through the POS Conhecimento Program which includes FEDER funds.
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Seabra, J., Sanches, J., Pedro, L.M., Fernandes e Fernandes, J. (2007). Three-Dimensional Ultrasonic Assessment of Atherosclerotic Plaques. In: Martí, J., Benedí, J.M., Mendonça, A.M., Serrat, J. (eds) Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis. IbPRIA 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4478. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72849-8_66
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72849-8_66
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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