METHOD FOR DETERMINING ATHEROSCLEROTIC PLAQUE MOBILITY Russian patent published in 2014 - IPC A61B8/00 

FIELD: medicine.

SUBSTANCE: invention refers to medicine, namely functional diagnostics in cardiology. A series of sequenced ultrasonic image frames of an atherosclerotic plaque in a longitudinal section of an artery over one cardiac cycle is obtained. The ultrasonic frame of the atherosclerotic plaque is processed to outline the base and the surface of the plaque on one of the initial frames of the cardiac cycle and to enhance at least three segments - distal, proximal and central on the contour line, and to measure the displacement parameters of the enhanced segment outline of the plaque surface in relation to the base over the cardiac cycle. What is also involved is determining a tangential speed of a plaque segment, a shear deformation of the plaque segment, a rate of shear deformation variation of the plaque segment that show the plaque mobility.

EFFECT: method enables determining qualitative parameters of the atherosclerotic plaque mobility, which can be used in a combination with the qualitative assessment of the plaque structure according to the grey scale pattern on the ultrasonic frame that enables performing the more reliable assessment of the plaque state characterising its stability, as well as monitoring the dynamic variations of the plaque and segment mobility.

10 cl, 13 dwg, 1 ex, 2 tbl