Motion-compensated frame-accumulating method to improve quality of carotid artery images

The motion-compensated frame-accumulating method (MCFAM) was carried out to improve B-mode image quality for plaque diagnosis. The effect of MCFAM on the imaging of the carotid intima, one of the potential predictors of plaque growth, was examined using the carotid of a healthy volunteer. MCFAM was found to be effective in imaging the carotid intima clearly as a contiguous object, although conventional imaging failed to visualize the entire intima. Quantitatively, the deviation of the echo signal intensity along the carotid intima, which corresponded to the discontinuity of the intima image, was 31% in the MCFAM image, 48% smaller than that in the conventional image. The deviation became lower with an increase in the number of accumulating frames in MCFAM, and was almost constant when more than 16 frames were accumulated. Because of the relatively small number of frames required, MCFAM was suggested to have the potential to contribute to quantitative plaque diagnosis by enabling accurate measurements of the carotid intima.