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An automatic approach for artifacts detection and shadow enhancement in intravascular ultrasound images

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Abstract

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is clinically available for visualizing coronary arteries. However, it suffers from acoustic shadow areas and ring-down artifacts as two of the common issues in IVUS images. This paper introduces an approach which can overcome these limitations. As shadow areas were displayed behind hard plaques in the IVUS grayscale images, calcified plaques were first segmented by using Otsu threshold. Then, active contour, histogram matching, and local histogram matching are implemented. In addition, a new modified circle Hough transform is introduced to remove the ring-down artifacts from IVUS images. In order to evaluate the efficacy of this new method in detection of shadow and ring-down regions, 300 IVUS images are considered. Sensitivity of 89% and specificity of 92% are achieved from a comparison in revelation of calcium along with shadow in the proposed method and virtual histology images. Also, area differences of \(5.83 \pm 3.3\) and \(5.65 \pm 2.83\) are obtained, respectively, for ring-down and shadow domain when compared to measures performed manually by a clinical expert.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

    Maryam Basij & Mohammadreza Yazdchi

  2. Department of Computer Aided Medical Procedures (CAMP), Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany

    Arash Taki

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

    Payman Moallem

Authors
  1. Maryam Basij
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  2. Mohammadreza Yazdchi
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  3. Arash Taki
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  4. Payman Moallem
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Correspondence to Maryam Basij.

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Basij, M., Yazdchi, M., Taki, A. et al. An automatic approach for artifacts detection and shadow enhancement in intravascular ultrasound images. SIViP 11, 1009–1016 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-016-1051-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-016-1051-x

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