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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, Jaume Garcia, & Enric Marti. (2011). "Image-based Cardiac Phase Retrieval in Intravascular Ultrasound Sequences " . IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, 58(1), 60–72.
Abstract: Longitudinal motion during in vivo pullbacks acquisition of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) sequences is a major artifact for 3-D exploring of coronary arteries. Most current techniques are based on the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal to obtain a gated pullback without longitudinal motion by using specific hardware or the ECG signal itself. We present an image-based approach for cardiac phase retrieval from coronary IVUS sequences without an ECG signal. A signal reflecting cardiac motion is computed by exploring the image intensity local mean evolution. The signal is filtered by a band-pass filter centered at the main cardiac frequency. Phase is retrieved by computing signal extrema. The average frame processing time using our setup is 36 ms. Comparison to manually sampled sequences encourages a deeper study comparing them to ECG signals.
Keywords: 3-D exploring; ECG; band-pass filter; cardiac motion; cardiac phase retrieval; coronary arteries; electrocardiogram signal; image intensity local mean evolution; image-based cardiac phase retrieval; in vivo pullbacks acquisition; intravascular ultrasound sequences; longitudinal motion; signal extrema; time 36 ms; band-pass filters; biomedical ultrasonics; cardiovascular system; electrocardiography; image motion analysis; image retrieval; image sequences; medical image processing; ultrasonic imaging
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2005). "A Deterministic-Statistical Strategy for Adventitia Segmentation in IVUS images ".
Abstract: A useful tool for some specific studies in cardiac disease diagnosis is vessel plaque assessment by analysis of IVUS sequences. Manual detection of luminal (inner) and media-adventitia (external) vessel borders is the main activity of physicians in the process of lumen narrowing (plaque) quantification. Difficult definition of vessel border descriptors, as well as, shades, artifacts and blurred signal response due to ultrasound physical properties troubles automated adventitia segmentation. In order to efficiently approach such a complex problem, we propose blending advanced anisotropic filtering operators and statistical classification techniques into a vessel border modelling strategy. Our systematic statistical analysis shows that the reported adventitia detection achieves an accuracy in the range of inter-observer variability regardless of plaque nature, vessel geometry and incomplete vessel borders.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2005). "On the usefulness of supervised learning for vessel border detection in IntraVascular Imaging " In Proceeding of the 2005 conference on Artificial Intelligence Research and Development (pp. 67–74). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: IOS Press.
Abstract: IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS) imaging is a useful tool in diagnosis of cardiac diseases since sequences completely show the morphology of coronary vessels. Vessel borders detection, especially the external adventitia layer, plays a central role in morphological measures and, thus, their segmentation feeds development of medical imaging techniques. Deterministic approaches fail to yield optimal results due to the large amount of IVUS artifacts and vessel borders descriptors. We propose using classification techniques to learn the set of descriptors and parameters that best detect vessel borders. Statistical hypothesis test on the error between automated detections and manually traced borders by 4 experts show that our detections keep within inter-observer variability.
Keywords: classification; vessel border modelling; IVUS
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, & Albert Teis. (2007). "How Do Conservation Laws Define a Motion Suppression Score in In-Vivo Ivus Sequences? " In Proc. IEEE Ultrasonics Symp (pp. 2231–2234).
Abstract: Evaluation of arterial tissue biomechanics for diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases is an active research field in the biomedical imaging processing area. IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS) is a unique tool for such assessment since it reflects tissue morphology and deformation. A proper quantification and visualization of both properties is hindered by vessel structures misalignments introduced by cardiac dynamics. This has encouraged development of IVUS motion compensation techniques. However, there is a lack of an objective evaluation of motion reduction ensuring a reliable clinical application This work reports a novel score, the Conservation of Density Rate (CDR), for validation of motion compensation in in-vivo pullbacks. Synthetic experiments validate the proposed score as measure of motion parameters accuracy; while results in in vivo pullbacks show its reliability in clinical cases.
Keywords: validation standards; IVUS motion compensation; conservation laws.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Petia Radeva, Antonio Tovar, & Debora Gil. (2006). "Vessel structures alignment by spectral analysis of ivus sequences " In Proc. of CVII, MICCAI Workshop (pp. 39–36). 1st International Wokshop on Computer Vision for Intravascular and Intracardiac Imaging (CVII’06). Copenhaguen (Denmark),.
Abstract: Three-dimensional intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) allows to visualize and obtain volumetric measurements of coronary lesions through an exploration of the cross sections and longitudinal views of arteries. However, the visualization and subsequent morpho-geometric measurements in IVUS longitudinal cuts are subject to distortion caused by periodic image/vessel motion around the IVUS catheter. Usually, to overcome the image motion artifact ECG-gating and image-gated approaches are proposed, leading to slowing the pullback acquisition or disregarding part of IVUS data. In this paper, we argue that the image motion is due to 3-D vessel geometry as well as cardiac dynamics, and propose a dynamic model based on the tracking of an elliptical vessel approximation to recover the rigid transformation and align IVUS images without loosing any IVUS data. We report an extensive validation with synthetic simulated data and in vivo IVUS sequences of 30 patients achieving an average reduction of the image artifact of 97% in synthetic data and 79% in real-data. Our study shows that IVUS alignment improves longitudinal analysis of the IVUS data and is a necessary step towards accurate reconstruction and volumetric measurements of 3-D IVUS.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, David Rotger, & Debora Gil. (2008). "Image-based ECG sampling of IVUS sequences " In Proc. IEEE Ultrasonics Symp. IUS 2008 (pp. 1330–1333).
Abstract: Longitudinal motion artifacts in IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS) sequences hinders a properly 3D reconstruction and vessel measurements. Most of current techniques base on the ECG signal to obtain a gated pullback without the longitudinal artifact by using a specific hardware or the ECG signal itself. The potential of IVUS images processing for phase retrieval still remains little explored. In this paper, we present a fast forward image-based algorithm to approach ECG sampling. Inspired on the fact that maximum and minimum lumen areas are related to end-systole and end-diastole, our cardiac phase retrieval is based on the analysis of tissue density of mass along the sequence. The comparison between automatic and manual phase retrieval (0.07 ± 0.07 mm. of error) encourages a deep validation contrasting with ECG signals.
Keywords: Longitudinal Motion; Image-based ECG-gating; Fourier analysis
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, Josefina Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2006). "Reducing cardiac motion in IVUS sequences " In Proceeding of Computers in Cardiology (Vol. 33, pp. 685–688).
Abstract: Cardiac vessel displacement is a main artifact in IVUS sequences. It hinders visualization of the main structures in an appropriate orientation and alignment and affects extracting vessel measurements. In this paper, we present a novel approach for image sequence alignment based on spectral analysis, which removes rigid dynamics, preserving at the same time the vessel geometry. First, we suppress the translation by taking, for each frame, the center of mass of the image as origin of coordinates. In polar coordinates with such point as origin, the rotation appears as a horizontal displacement. The translation induces a phase shift in the Fourier coefficients of two consecutive polar images. We estimate the phase by adjusting a regression plane to the phases of the principal frequencies. Experiments show that the presented strategy suppress cardiac motion regardless of the acquisition device. 1.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, Petia Radeva, & E.N.Nofrerias. (2004). "Anisotropic processing of image structures for adventitia detection in intravascular ultrasound images " In Proc. Computers in Cardiology (Vol. 31, pp. 229–232). Chicago (USA).
Abstract: The adventitia layer appears as a weak edge in IVUS images with a non-uniform grey level, which difficulties its detection. In order to enhance edges, we apply an anisotropic filter that homogenizes the grey level along the image significant structures (ridges, valleys and edges). A standard edge detector applied to the filtered image yields a set of candidate points prone to be unconnected. The final model is obtained by interpolating the former line segments along the tangent direction to the level curves of the filtered image with an anisotropic contour closing technique based on functional extension principles
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Ole Vilhelm-Larsen, Petia Radeva, & Enric Marti. (1995). "Guidelines for choosing optimal parameters of elasticity for snakes " In Computer Analysis Of Images And Patterns (Vol. 970, pp. 106–113). Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
Abstract: This paper proposes a guidance in the process of choosing and using the parameters of elasticity of a snake in order to obtain a precise segmentation. A new two step procedure is defined based on upper and lower bounds on the parameters. Formulas, by which these bounds can be calculated for real images where parts of the contour may be missing, are presented. Experiments on segmentation of bone structures in X-ray images have verified the usefulness of the new procedure.
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Ole Larsen, Petia Radeva, & Enric Marti. (1995). "Bounds on the optimal elasticity parameters for a snake " . Image Analysis and Processing, , 37–42.
Abstract: This paper develops a formalism by which an estimate for the upper and lower bounds for the elasticity parameters for a snake can be obtained. Objects different in size and shape give rise to different bounds. The bounds can be obtained based on an analysis of the shape of the object of interest. Experiments on synthetic images show a good correlation between the estimated behaviour of the snake and the one actually observed. Experiments on real X-ray images show that the parameters for optimal segmentation lie within the estimated bounds.
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