Correlation between ultrasound B-mode images of carotid plaque and histological examination

Abstract

This paper reports on a study on 69 patients where image features extracted from B-mode ultrasound images of atherosclerotic plaque in the carotid arteries were compared to histological results obtained from the same plaque after carotid endarterectomy. The study also investigated the correlation between image features and visual classification of the plaque appearance as revealed by ultrasound scanning. The study found a few texture features to be significantly correlated to the histological findings within the training set (p=0.002-0.04). However, the correlation found may not be reliable for clinical determination of plaque composition. The correlation between image texture features and the visual classification of the B-mode images was, not surprisingly, found to be much better. Thus, computer analysis is likely to be useful in future investigations as many problems with intra- and inter-observer variations that inherently exist in the subjective visual classification can be eliminated.