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Atherosclerotic Carotid Plaque Segmentation in Ultrasound Imaging of the Carotid Artery

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Multi-Modality Atherosclerosis Imaging and Diagnosis

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Abstract

In this chapter, we propose and evaluate an integrated system for the segmentation of atherosclerotic plaque in ultrasound imaging of the carotid artery based on normalization, speckle reduction filtering, and four different snakes segmentation methods. These methods are the Williams and Shah, Balloon, Lai and Chin, and the gradient vector flow (GVF) snake. The performance of the four different plaque snakes segmentation methods was tested on 80 longitudinal ultrasound images of the carotid artery using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and the manual delineations of an expert. All four methods performed very satisfactorily and similarly in all measures evaluated with no significant differences between them; however, the Lai and Chin snakes segmentation method gave slightly better results. Concluding, it is proposed that the integrated system investigated in this study could be used successfully for the automated segmentation of the carotid plaque.

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Abbreviations

2D:

Two-dimensional

3D:

Three-dimensional

4D:

Four-dimensional

ACSRS:

Asymptomatic carotid stenosis and risk of stroke

AS:

Automated segmentation

ATL:

Advanced Technology Laboratories

CCA:

Common carotid artery

DsFlsmv:

Despeckle filter linear scaling mean variance

F:

Effectiveness

FNF:

False-negative fraction

FPF:

False-positive fraction

GT:

Ground truth

GVF:

Gradient vector flow

IMT:

Intima–media thickness

IVUS:

Intravascular ultrasound

KI:

Kappa index

MR:

Magnetic resonance

MRI:

Magnetic resonance image

P:

Precision

ROC:

Receiver operating characteristics

Sp:

Specificity

TIA:

Transient ischemic attack

TNF:

True-negative fraction

TPF:

True-positive fraction

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, School of Sciences and Engineering, Intercollege, 92 Ayias Phylaxeos Street, 51604, 3507, Limassol, Cyprus

    Christos P. Loizou

  2. The Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics, 23462, 1683, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Marios Pantzaris

Authors
  1. Christos P. Loizou
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  2. Marios Pantzaris
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christos P. Loizou .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, A.O.U Cagliari - Polo di Monserrato, Bivio per Sestu, Italy

    Luca Saba

  2. Instituto Superior Técnico Institute for Systems and Robotics, Lisboa, Portugal

    João Miguel Sanches

  3. Hospital de Santa Maria, Lisboa, Portugal

    Luís Mendes Pedro

  4. Stroke Research and Monitoring Division, AtheroPoint(TM) LLC, Roseville, California, USA

    Jasjit S. Suri

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Loizou, C.P., Pantzaris, M. (2014). Atherosclerotic Carotid Plaque Segmentation in Ultrasound Imaging of the Carotid Artery. In: Saba, L., Sanches, J., Pedro, L., Suri, J. (eds) Multi-Modality Atherosclerosis Imaging and Diagnosis. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7425-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7425-8_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-7424-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7425-8

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