Elasticity imaging of artery walls with intravascular ultrasound

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) techniques offering grayscale images of arteries with sub-millimeter resolution are the basis of imaging artery elasticity. The authors developed a rectifying method for transducer off-axis effects and an optical flow estimation method based on genetic algorithms (GAOF) for the estimation of the strain in the artery wall. Furthermore, elasticity profile reconstruction is performed using the strain and equilibrium equations. Combining these methods and carefully operating, the results in vitro demonstrate that elasticity imaging of an artery with sub-millimeter resolution is possible