A noninvasive ultrasonic method for arterial plaque characterisation

Current clinical methods for the assessment of arterial disease are based upon ultrasonic measurements which produce images at around thirty frames per second-i.e. plaque assessment is done on the basis of flow disturbance. An alternative approach is to image and assess the plaque directly. At present, this is done by analysing the grey-scale B-mode image. In this paper an alternative and novel approach is presented in which single image frames are analysed in detail on the basis of processing the RF data which comprise the individual scan lines. The final result of this process is a, so called, histological colour map (HCM). The HCM is superimposed on the original grey-scale image. Different colours in the HCM define different plaque types. Pilot clinical trials have shown good correlation between standard histological staining tests and the corresponding HCMs