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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Advisor: Brooks D. Lindsey (Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University)
Committee:
Stanislav Emelianov (Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University)
Alessandro Veneziani (Emory University)
John Oshinski (Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University)
Costas D. Arvanitis (Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Tech)
Development of a forward-viewing high frequency ultrasound for velocity and wall shear stress estimation in coronary arteries
Coronary artery disease is the most common type of cardiovascular disease, affecting > 18 million adults, and is responsible for > 365 k deaths per year in the U.S. alone. Wall shear stress (WSS) is an indicator of likelihood of plaque rupture in the coronary artery disease, however, non-invasive estimation of 3D blood flow velocity and WSS is challenging due to the requirement for high spatial resolution at deep penetration depths. For this reason, catheter-based forward-viewing intravascular ultrasound (FV IVUS) imaging system is being developed to estimate real-time 3D velocity fields. This study aims to develop a velocity and WSS estimation technique for a forward-viewing high frequency ultrasound array transducer in a coronary artery with an intermediate stenosis. The Aims of this project are: 1) Ultrasound-based blood flow velocity and WSS estimation approaches will be compared in a patient-specific coronary artery geometry, 2) motion correction techniques will be developed and implemented to accurately estimate WSS even in the presence of dynamic cardiac motion, and 3) the developed techniques will be evaluated in an in vivo coronary environment. This work will determine the accuracy of ultrasound-based blood flow velocity and WSS estimation techniques using a forward-viewing, high frequency ultrasound transducer for characterizing the coronary environment and assessing plaque vulnerability.