Abstract

Arterial motion estimation in ultrasound (US) sequences is a hard task due to noise and discontinuities in the signal derived from US artifacts. Characterizing the mechanical properties of the artery is a promising novel imaging technique to diagnose various cardiovascular pathologies and a new way of obtaining relevant clinical information, such as determining the absence of dicrotic peak, estimating the Augmentation Index (AIx), the arterial pressure or the arterial stiffness. One of the advantages of using US imaging is the non-invasive nature of the technique unlike Intra Vascular Ultra Sound (IVUS) or angiography invasive techniques, plus the relative low cost of the US units. In this paper, we propose a semi rigid deformable method based on Soft Bodies dynamics realized by a hybrid motion approach based on cross-correlation and optical flow methods to quantify the elasticity of the artery. We evaluate and compare different techniques (for instance optical flow methods) on which our approach is based. The goal of this comparative study is to identify the best model to be used and the impact of the accuracy of these different stages in the proposed method. To this end, an exhaustive assessment has been conducted in order to decide which model is the most appropriate for registering the variation of the arterial diameter over time. Our experiments involved a total of 1620 evaluations within nine simulated sequences of 84 frames each and the estimation of four error metrics. We conclude that our proposed approach obtains approximately 2.5 times higher accuracy than conventional state-of-the-art techniques.

Highlights

  • Estimating the variation of motion in the artery for vascular characterization [1] is a new technique that helps doctors to detect specific diseases

  • Arterial pressure and arterial wall motion are related since estimating the pressure requires measuring the variation of the diameter of the artery, as it is indicated in Equation (2)

  • N is the number of points, in our case, six points, and M is the number of frames per sequence

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Summary

Introduction

Estimating the variation of motion in the artery for vascular characterization [1] is a new technique that helps doctors to detect specific diseases. Pressure Index (ABPI) [2] or Augmentation Index (AIx) have been used to estimate parameters (blood pressure) that are associated with peripheral vascular diseases. Arterial pressure and arterial wall motion are related since estimating the pressure requires measuring the variation of the diameter of the artery, as it is indicated in Equation (2). The importance of the wall motion artery’s characterization has been discussed by several authors who have demonstrated that radial [1,6,7,8] and longitudinal [9,10,11] motion are promising indicators to be associated with certain diseases or pathologies

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