Importance

• Cardiovascular diseases represent the primary cause of death in developed countries.
• US causes of death:
• heart and coronary disease 35%
• stroke 7%
• cancer 25%
• Cardiovascular diseases cause twice as many deaths as cancer.

• The assessment of arterial geometry is of paramount importance in the clinical evaluation of patients with ischemic heart disease.

• The vast majority of existing quantitative methods for coronary vessel analysis have focused on single coronary vessel segments. However, coronary artery disease is frequently characterized by the presence of multiple stenoses and diffuse but variable narrowing in the vasculature supplying a given myocardial bed and often requires quantitative analysis of the entire coronary tree.
• Intravascular ultrasound imaging (IVUS) is gaining increasing attention and holds a great promise to overcome several limitations of contrast coronary angiography.

• Major limitations of coronary angiography: Projectional images of vessel lumen are acquired, no information about vessel wall morphology, no information about plaque.
• But ... vessel wall and plaque morphology is available from IVUS imaging.
• Major limitation of IVUS: No information about the 3-D vessel course.
• But ... 3D vessel course is available from biplane angiography images.
• Obviously, data fusion between biplane coronary angiography and IVUS may bring three-dimensionally correct information about coronary morphology.

• Geometrically accurate 3-D vessel reconstruction from IVUS pullback sequence of pig heart #2 (10.5 MB) and pig heart #3 (with clips) (6.7 MB).
• is increasingly recognized in the medical community;
• represents a needed diagnostic tool in the clinical routine;
• can support the physician in conceptualizing the actual vascular shape and morphology including lesion morphology;
• can help in cardiac intervention decision making;
• can improve reliability of restenosis prediction;
• can further increase stent positioning quality.
• Geometrically accurate 3-D vessel reconstruction from IVUS pullback sequences will improve the diagnostic value of IVUS pullback imaging.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome. Please direct any correspondence to Milan Sonka by email: milan-sonka@uiowa.edu .

Last Modified: September 13, 1997

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