Abstract
Vivid images of the carotid bifurcation and atherosclerotic plaques can be obtained using real time transcutaneous ultrasound (Fig. 5.1). Compared to other imaging methods, ultrasound has several advantages for studying the dynamic processes that characterize arterial pathology. Acquiring data at rates as high as 10,000 samples per second, while measuring motions less than 0.001 mm (1 μm) and strains in millimeter voxels less than 0.1%, ultrasound is ideally suited to obtain information about complicated turbulent blood flow in real time, as well as the associated dynamics of the arterial walls containing those flows. However, the identification of intraplaque tissue types visualized in ultrasound images has been elusive. Differentiating the types of plaque tissues is considered to be important.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Ajay Anand, Kris Dickie, Siddhartha Sikdar, Edward Stutzman, Lei Sui, and Canxing Xu for providing images. Thanks to Jean Primozich for the first vibration waveforms and for studies on the effect of Doppler examination angles. Thanks to Professor Yongmin Kim for his collaboration on advanced ultrasound methods. Special thanks to David Phillips for teaching me about the physics of ultrasound and for conceiving ultrasound displacement measurements. Greatest thanks to Professor D. Eugene Strandness, Jr. for inviting me into this fascinating endeavor. Thanks also to the taxpayers of the United States and their support through the National Institute of Health.
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Beach, K.W. (2011). Principles of Ultrasonic Imaging and Instrumentation. In: Nicolaides, A., Beach, K., Kyriacou, E., Pattichis, C. (eds) Ultrasound and Carotid Bifurcation Atherosclerosis. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-688-5_5
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