Volumetric Intravascular Ultrasound Visualization Using Shape-based Nonlinear Interpolation

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) has been utilized primarily to evaluate plaque formation of the coronary and carotid arteries. Several studies have reported three-dimensional (3D) IVUS image reconstruction algorithms to better provide anatomical information of the arterial wall structure. However, most of previous 3D IVUS studies provided unrealistic morphology and acoustic information in the arterial wall due to the low quality of input image data and the linear interpolation algorithm. In the present study, we proposed an improved algorithm to generate intermediary slices using a shape-based nonlinear interpolation method, and created volumetric 3D IVUS images using radio frequency (RF) raw IVUS signal data of a porcine femoral artery. Both arterial structure and acoustic intensity information of the intermediary slice were created by the cubic spline interpolation. This novel volumetric 3D IVUS visualization strategy has the potential to improve vascular ultrasound imaging for better determination of atheroma distribution in the arterial structure.