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Bi-modal imaging of atherosclerotic plaques: Automated method for co-registration between fluorescence lifetime imaging and intravascular ultrasound data

The risk of atherosclerosis plaque rupture cannot be assessed by the current imaging systems and thus new multi-modal technologies are under investigation. This includes combining a new fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIm) technique, which is sensitive to plaque biochemical features, with conventional intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), which provides information on plaque morphology. In this study we present an automated method allowing for the co-registration of imaging data acquired based on these two techniques. Intraluminal studies were conducted in ex-vivo segments of human coronaries with a multimodal catheter integrating a commercial IVUS (40 MHz) and a rotational side-viewing fiber based multispectral FLIm system (355 nm excitation, 390±20, 452±22 and 542±25 nm acquisition wavelengths). The proposed method relies on the lumen/intima boundary extraction from the IVUS polar images. Image restoration is applied for the noise reduction and edge enhancement, while gray-scale peak tracing over the A-lines of the IVUS polar images is applied for the lumen boundary extraction. The detection of the guide-wire artifact is used for the angular registration between FLIm and IVUS data, after which the lifetime values can be mapped onto the segmented lumen/intima interface. The segmentation accuracy has been assessed against manual tracings, providing 0.120±0.054 mm mean Hausdorff distance. This method makes the bi-modal FLIm and IVUS approach feasible for comprehensive intravascular diagnostic by providing co-registered biochemical and morphological information about atherosclerotic plaques.