Comparative study of textural analysis techniques to characterise tissue from intravascular ultrasound

Thrombosis of coronary arteries is a condition responsible for many acute coronary syndromes. The ability to categorise thrombus belonging to distinct pathological groups, would contribute to the understanding of the pathophysiologic structure of individual lesions, as well as making a significant contribution to treatment choice. Here, the authors investigate the use of statistical texture analysis techniques to assess the ability of 30 MHz intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) data, in raw and scan-converted form, to characterise intracoronary thrombus. Three clot types were assessed in the study, these were, red (R), white (W) and plasma (P). Histopathological analysis, the de facto standard in identifying tissue composition, was used to form a Gold Standard based upon clot composition, from which the results were verified. The results show the ability of the texture analysis techniques used to discriminate clot lesions, and highlights the advantage of using the raw data over the scan-converted data in assessing thrombus composition in vitro