Since the introduction of coronary balloon angioplasty in the clinical arena, percutaneous catheter- based interventions are perfornled with coronary angiographic guidance, depicting the lumen of an entire coronary artery in certain angiographicviews. Subsequently, quantitative coronary angiography was developed as an instnullent for off-line quantitative analysis of the acute and long-tenn effects of catheter-based and phanl1acological approaches on atherosclerotic lesions and on lesion recurrence following angioplasty. Despite some inherent limitations, tills analysis method became generally accepted for on-line guidance of balloon angioplasty and alternative catheterbased techniques. Thereafter, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) was introduced as a new imaging method that provided deeper insights into the pathology of coronary artery disease by defining vessel wall geometry and the major components of the atherosclerotic plaque. Although invasive, IVUS is safe and allows in vivo a more comprehensive assessment of the plaque than the 'luminal silhouette' furnished by coronary angiography. as it provides transmural cross-sectional inlaging of coronary arteries and allows diameter and area measurements of both lumen and atherosclerotic plaque. These measurements can be used for guidance of interventional procedures and for research purposes. Nevertheless, conventional IVUS is a planar technique, which displays only a single site of the coronary vessel at a time. However, threedimensional (3D) reconstruction of sequences of IVUS images, acquired with defined sample spacing, allows to overcome this limitation.

, , ,
Netherlands Heart Foundation, Interuniversity Cardiology Institute for the Netherlands
P.W.J.C. Serruys (Patrick)
Erasmus University Rotterdam
hdl.handle.net/1765/16990
Erasmus MC: University Medical Center Rotterdam

von Birgelen, C. (1998, December 16). Three-Dimensional Intravascular UItrasound Assessment of Coronary Lumen and Atherosclerotic Plaque Dimensions. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/16990