Interdisciplinary approach to multimodal image fusion for vulnerable plaque detection

In diagnosis, planning, intervention and monitoring of the potentially fatal Coronary Artery Disease multimodal medical imaging plays an important role. Medical cardiac images of patients suffering from Atherosclerosis exhibit information on cardiovascular plaque that can cause a sudden death due to its vulnerability. The identification of vulnerable plaque is an important research field and can be supported by the use of multimodal image fusion combining anatomical as well as functional information in one image medium. Image fusion has proven to enhance critical components of the multimodal data sources that enable improved diagnostics and intervention. The advancement of image fusion techniques and an intelligent selection of multimodal medical image combinations in the context of vulnerable plaque detection require an interdisciplinary approach. This paper reports on the first achievements of a collaborative research project involving clinicians and image processing engineers. During the first stage an interdisciplinary workflow was established. Critical research questions were identified. The second phase will concentrate on image processing to fuse selected multimodalities to obtain images of higher quality which will ease the daily work of the clinicians and reduce invasiveness for the patients.