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Session: Arteries
Session starts: Thursday 24 January, 10:30
Presentation starts: 11:30
Room: Lecture room 536

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Min Wu (TU/e)
Richard Lopata (TU/e)

Abstract:
The rupture of the vulnerable carotid plaque is the major cause of stroke. Currently in clinics, the diagnosis and treatment of stroke is generally based on the US characterized plaque morphology (lumen stenosis), resulting in overtreatment. It is reported that 9 symptomatic or even 19 asymptomatic patients need to be operated on to prevent a single stroke in a time span of 5 years. This indicates a strong unmet clinical need for a more effective method to improve the assessment of stroke risk for the individual patient. PA/US imaging can provide comprehensive (both morphology and chemical composition) and patient-specific assessment of plaque vulnerability, being a useful tool to better assess the plaque vulnerability and prevent overtreatment. However, in practice, PAUS imaging suffers from low PA SNR mainly due to limited light permissible exposure under some safety regulations. Therefore, it is quite a challenge to translate PAUS imaging into clinics. In this paper, a preclinical study of PAUS imaging of carotid plaque is conducted using a fast PAUS imaging system (about kHz laser pulse repetition rate and a fully integrated, hand hold imaging probe). A motion corrected averaging algorithm for in vivo PA imaging is developed. The high capability of the integrated imaging system and the proposed averaging algorithm is validated by a designed ex vivo PAUS experiment, which is performed to mimic the in vivo intra-operative PAUS imaging of the human carotid plaque. The results may accelerate the clinical translation of PAUS imaging of carotid plaque.