A new approach for estimating wall motion of b-mode common carotid artery using block matching technique

In this paper, wall motion analysis of common carotid artery (CCA) has been done to identify whether the subjects are normal or abnormal. B-mode transverse ultrasound images have been obtained for normal and abnormal subjects with known cardio vascular complaints. Image normalization has been done to enhance the quality of CCA image and a seed point is initialized in in the center of lumen area of the first frame. Block matching technique has been applied to track the movement of carotid artery wall. Best matching block has been obtained in the subsequent frames using normalized cross correlation coefficient. The displacements in x and y directions have been obtained by tracking the wall motion in horizontal and vertical directions. The strain and stiffness indices for both normal and abnormal subjects were obtained. The mean stiffness indices for normal and abnormal subjects are found to be 5.478 and 10.04 respectively. The classification is done using the estimated parameters.