Intravascular Detection of Microvessel Infiltration in Atherosclerotic Plaques: An Intraluminal Extension of Acoustic Angiography

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, surpassing both stroke and cancer related mortality with 17.5 million deaths in 2014 alone. Atherosclerosis is the build-up of fatty deposits within arteries and is responsible for the majority of cardiovascular related deaths. Over the past decade, research in atherosclerosis has identified that a key limitation in the appropriate management of the disease is detecting and identifying dangerous fatty plaque build-ups before they dislodge and cause major cardiovascular events, such as embolisms, stroke, or myocardial infarctions. It has been noted that plaques vulnerable to rupture have several key features that may be used to distinguish them from asymptomatic plaques. One key identifier of a dangerous plaque is the presence of blood flow within the plaque itself since this is an indicator of growth and instability of the plaque. Recently, a superharmonic imaging method known as “acoustic angiography” has been shown to resolve microvasculature with unprecedented quality and could be a possible method of detecting blood vessel infiltration within these plaques. This dissertation describes the material and methods used to move the application of “acoustic angiography” to a reduced form factor typical of intravascular catheters and to demonstrate its ability to detect microvasculature. The implementation of this approach is described in terms of the contrast agents used to generate superharmonic signals, the dual-frequency transducers to image them, and the hardware needed to operate them in order to establish how these design choices can impact the quality of the images produced. Furthermore, this dissertation demonstrates how image processing methods such as adaptive windowing or automated sound speed correction can further enhance image quality of vascular targets. The results of these chapters show how acoustic angiography may be optimized using engineering considerations both in signal acquisition and post processing. Overall, these studies demonstrate that acoustic angiography can be performed using a catheter-deployable dual-frequency transducer to detect microvasculature through superharmonic imaging methods.Doctor of Philosoph

DICOM for EIT

With EIT starting to be used in routine clinical practice [1], it important that the clinically relevant information is portable between hospital data management systems. DICOM formats are widely used clinically and cover many imaging modalities, though not specifically EIT. We describe how existing DICOM specifications, can be repurposed as an interim solution, and basis from which a consensus EIT DICOM ‘Supplement’ (an extension to the standard) can be writte

Torso shape detection to improve lung monitoring

Two methodologies are proposed to detect the patient-specific boundary of the chest, aiming to produce a more accurate forward model for EIT analysis. Thus, a passive resistive and an inertial prototypes were prepared to characterize and reconstruct the shape of multiple phantoms. Preliminary results show how the passive device generates a minimum scatter between the reconstructed image and the actual shap

Digital twin of analogue man:development of a computational modelling platform to assess heart-vessel interaction in humans

The concept of using ‘twins’ is not new. For many years, plastic replicas of skeletons (i.e. ‘physical twins’) have been used in the classroom as well as in the general practitioner’s office to explain aspects of the human skeletal anatomy. Physical twins were also used during NASA’s Project Apollo in which two identical spacecraft were built, one to remain on the basis, which allowed engineers to recreate the conditions of the spacecraft during missions. Digital twin technology is a novel concept originating from manufacturing industry. A digital twin refers to a virtual or computational model containing a comprehensive physical and functional description of a component, product or system. In this thesis, we applied the digital twin concept to cardiovascular research by developing and evaluating a computational modelling platform to assess heart-vessel interaction. The developed models were employed in two use-cases concerning patient-specific modelling: 1) non-invasive computational methods to allow screening for cardiac abnormalities and 2) non-invasive identification of arterial wall mechanical properties to assess the effect of (novel) vascular drugs on cardiovascular system dynamics

Estimation of thorax shape for forward modelling in lungs EIT

The thorax models for pre-term babies are developed based on the CT scans from new-borns and their effect on image reconstruction is evaluated in comparison with other available models

Rapid generation of subject-specific thorax forward models

For real-time monitoring of lung function using accurate patient geometry, shape information needs to be acquired and a forward model generated rapidly. This paper shows that warping a cylindrical model to an acquired shape results in meshes of acceptable mesh quality, in terms of stretch and aspect ratio

Nanoparticle electrical impedance tomography

We have developed a new approach to imaging with electrical impedance tomography (EIT) using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to enhance impedance changes at targeted tissue sites. This is achieved using radio frequency (RF) to heat nanoparticles while applying EIT imaging. The initial results using 5-nm citrate coated AuNPs show that heating can enhance the impedance in a solution containing AuNPs due to the application of an RF field at 2.60 GHz