Feasibility of novel grinding device with forward-looking intravascular ultrasound transducer in coronary rotational atherectomy

Coronary rotational atherectomy (CRA) is a minimally invasive interventional procedure used to remove the calcified tissue of the arterial wall. Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) can be used as an adjunctive imaging modality to enhance the success rate of the procedure. However, for severely calcified or even occluded vessels, traditional side-viewing intravascular ultrasound catheters cannot image through. This paper presents a visualized rotational atherectomy device based on forward-looking IVUS. An ultrasound imaging platform was built to perform tissue sample imaging experiments. Bovine bone was employed to simulate calcified tissue, and a vascular tissue-mimicking phantom was designed and fabricated for quantitative analysis. Depth information was added to the obtained forward-looking IVUS images to annotate the distance between the rotational atherectomy device and the calcified tissue ahead. The experimental results show that the visualized rotational atherectomy device can obtain intraluminal information of the vessel ahead of the grinding tool, which helps surgeons set reasonable rotational atherectomy parameters and evaluate the results of the previous rotational atherectomy, thus efficiently removing calcified lesions and reducing surgical complications.