SUMMARY

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 the likelihood of plaque rupture in 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.