Patent Document ID: 7955265
Application ID: 11203904
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for measuring a thickness of a portion of a multi-layer vessel based on at least one contrast-enhanced medical diagnostic image frame using an integrated ultrasound device, wherein the at least one image frame including an X-axis that is substantially parallel to an intima-media of the anatomic structure and a Y-axis that is perpendicular to the x-axis, said method comprising: acquiring an ultrasound image of a portion of the multi-layer vessel wherein the vessel includes ultrasound contrast agents; and automatically determining an intima-medial thickness (IMT) of the contrast enhanced image using an algorithm executing in the integrated ultrasound device and that comprises; determining an Averaged Pattern (AP) and an Inversed Averaged Pattern (IAP) of a plurality of intensity vectors using an average of the plurality of intensity vectors along the x-axis wherein the AP is evaluated in the ascending direction of x-axis and the IAP is evaluated in the descending direction of x-axis; determining a Y coordinate of a center of an intima-media center (IMC) of the vessel using a maximum of the second derivative of the AP/IAP wherein if a region of interest (ROI) includes anterior and posterior adventitia, the anterior IMC is determined as a global maximum on the first half of the vector of the second derivative of the AP/IAP and the posterior IMC is found as a global maximum on the second half of the vector of the second derivative of the AP/IAP, if the ROI includes only anterior or posterior adventitia, the IMC is determined as a global maximum on the whole vector of the second derivative of the AP/IAP; determining a Running Pattern (RP) and an Inversed Running Pattern (IRP) for each X coordinate wherein the running pattern is calculated for each X coordinate as an average along the x-axis of the intensity vectors inside the window of the specific Window Size (WS), taking into account shift between the neighbor vectors, the RP is evaluated in the ascending direction of the x-axis, the IRP is evaluated in the descending direction of the x-axis; determining for each X coordinate, a Running Shift (RS) between the ROI vector and the RP corresponding to the current X coordinate and Averaged Shift (AS) between the ROI vector corresponding to the current X coordinate and the AP wherein the RS and the AS are determined as a maximum of the cross correlation function between the ROI vector and RP and AP respectively, for the first WS vectors of the ROI, the RS and the AS are found as a maximum of the cross correlation function between the ROI vector and IRP and IAP respectively; determining, for each X coordinate, the Y coordinate of the center of intima-media as a maximum of the second derivative of the RP or IRP corresponding to the current X coordinate wherein for the first WS vectors of the ROI, applying the IRP, for the remaining vectors in the ROI, applying the RP; determining for each X coordinate, the adventitia-media interface Y coordinate as the coordinate of the nearest zero crossing previous to the anterior IMC coordinate found on the second derivative of the RP or IRP corresponding to the each X coordinate; determining for each X coordinate the intima-lumen interface Y coordinate as the coordinate of the nearest zero crossing after the anterior IMC coordinate found on the second derivative of the RP or IRP corresponding to the each X coordinate; determining for each X coordinate the lumen-intima interface Y coordinate as the coordinate of the nearest zero crossing previous to the posterior IMC coordinate found on the second derivative of the RP or IRP corresponding to the each X coordinate; determining for each X coordinate media-adventitia interface Y coordinate as the coordinate of the nearest zero crossing after the posterior IMC coordinate found on the second derivative of the RP or IRP corresponding to the each X coordinate; determining a thickness of at least one vessel layer using X and Y coordinates of respective layer interfaces; and outputting the thickness to a display.