Evaluation of Blood Induced Influence for High-Definition Intravascular Ultrasound (HD-IVUS)

• Published in: IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control Vol. 69; no. 1; pp. 98 - 105
• Main Authors: Liang, Suzi, Su, Min, Liu, Baoqiang, Liu, Rong, Zheng, Hairong, Qiu, Weibao, Zhang, Zhiqiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.01.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Acoustics; Animals; Atherosclerosis; Attenuation; Blood; Blood attenuation; Coronary Artery Disease; Coronary Vessels - diagnostic imaging; Dextrans; Equipment Design; Evaluation; Flushing; flushing agent; High definition; high-definition intravascular ultrasound (HD-IVUS); Image resolution; Imaging; Mannitol; Plaque, Atherosclerotic; Signal quality; Signal to noise ratio; Swine; Tomography, Optical Coherence; Transducers; ultrahigh-frequency ultrasound; Ultrasonic imaging; Ultrasonography; Ultrasonography, Interventional; Wires
• ISSN: 0885-3010; 1525-8955
• DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2021.3108163

High-definition intravascular ultrasound (HD-IVUS) utilizing more than 80 MHz frequency to assess atherosclerotic plaque, can theoretically achieve an axial resolution of less than <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">20~\mu \text{m} </tex-math></inline-formula>. However, the blood is a high-attenuation source at high frequency, which would affect the imaging quality. There has been no research evaluating the blood-induced influence on HD-IVUS imaging. And whether a temporary removal of blood is needed for HD-IVUS is unknown. In this study, an ultrahigh-frequency (100 MHz) ultrasound transducer was developed to evaluate the blood-induced attenuation for HD-IVUS imaging. A series of tungsten-wire phantom images in saline and blood at varying hematocrits were obtained. The images showed that blood did influence the ultrahigh-frequency imaging quality greatly. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) decrease by 71.7% in porcine whole blood compared to that in saline at the same depth of 2.3 mm. Moreover, the potential flushing schemes for HD-IVUS were studied in varying hematocrits. Three flushing agents commonly used in intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) were investigated, including iohexol, mannitol, and dextran 5% and saline as the control group. The attenuation of blood in varying hematocrits/flushing agents was measured from 90 to 110 MHz. The result indicated dextran 5% was a suitable flushing agent for HD-IVUS due to its less signal attenuation compared to others.