Vessel Structures Alignment by Spectral Analysis of IVUS Sequences

IntraVascular UltraSound is an imaging technique very helpful for the diagnosis and treatment of cardiac diseases, since it allows the visualization of vessel morphology together with vessel geometry and dynamics induced by heart motion. Non rigid arterial deformation is of clinical interest, since it serves to measure vessel wall stiffness and, through elastographic analysis, to determine vessel plaque nature. However, rigid arterial displacement is a main artifact in any study involving geometric measurements (segmentation, elastography, etc). In this paper, we present a novel method based on spectral analysis which removes rigid cardiac dynamics and preserves the vessel geometry. Results on invivo sequences show that the proposed strategy aligns vessel structures regardless of the acquisition device characteristics.