A modified synthetic aperture focusing technique for the correction of geometric artefacts in intravascular ultrasound elastography

Various elastography methods have been developed for imaging the elastic properties of coronary plaques with intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). In these methods the vessel tissue is compressed due to changes of the intraluminal pressure, i.e. by a force originating from the lumen center. If the transducer is not centered in the lumen, the ultrasound beams are not parallel to the direction of force, which leads to errors in the strain estimate. In this work a modified synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) is presented, that allows the reconstruction of ultrasound beams parallel to the force direction. To verify this approach, IVUS data and a cylindrical phantom are simulated with various eccentric catheter positions.