A Parallel Method for Segmenting Intravascular Ultrasound Image Sequence

摘要

Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) is one of interventional imaging modalities widely used in clinical diagnosis of vascular diseases, especially coronary artery diseases. Segmentation of IVUS images to extract vessel wall boundaries is of importance for quantitative analysis and 3D vessel reconstruction. A 3D parallel method for segmenting IVUS image sequence is proposed in this paper. Firstly, original images are preprocessed to reduce possible noises and eliminate ring-down artifacts. Then, several longitudinal cuts are obtained and intima-lumen and media-adventitia boundaries are detected. Once these boundaries are mapped onto each cross-sectional slice, initial plan of vessel wall boundaries in each frame is obtained. Finally, these initial contours evolve continuously until stop at target contours. Consequently, segmentation of each IVUS tomographic frame is implemented simultaneously and the efficiency is greatly raised compared with 2D sequential approaches.