Intravascular Young's modulus reconstruction using a parametric finite element model

IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS) elastography may be used to detect vulnerable, rupture prone plaques, which are held responsible for the majority of acute coronary syndromes. IVUS elastography accomplishes this by visualising local incremental radial strain of arteries, in so-called elastograms. These are an artifactual image of the Young's modulus distribution and therefore, they cannot be directly interpreted as plaque component images. To overcome this limitation, we developed a modulography tool, which converts an elastogram into a modulogram, i.e. a Young's modulus image. This tool is especially developed for reconstruction of plaques having a lipid pool covered by a cap. Reconstruction consists of matching the strain image output, calculated with a parametric finite element model (PFEM) representation of a vulnerable plaque, to an elastogram by iteratively updating the PFEM parameters. The modulography tool successfully reconstructed both geometry and composition of a vulnerable plaque, solely using an elastogram as input.