Abstract
In a diagnosis of the acute coronary syndrome, the tissue characterization of coronary plaque is very important. The integrated backscatter (IB) analysis is a typical method for the tissue characterization by using the intravascular ultrasound method. The IB analysis employs the IB value, which is a locally averaged power of the backscattered ultrasound signal (RF signal). However, the IB analysis is not always accurate for the classification of the tissues. We propose a novel method for the tissue characterization by using a sparse coding. In the proposed method, the RF signal is coded by the sparse coding, and the code patterns are used for classification. Experiments are performed to classify the tissues of the plaque into the fibrous and the lipid tissues using the RF signal, which is obtained from a rabbit coronary artery. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified by comparing it with the IB analysis.
