Aorta Image Analysis and Characterization for Atherosclerosis

• Main Authors: chihchao-liu, 劉智超
• Other Authors: YEN-TING CHEN
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/67371061119737302417

碩士 === 南台科技大學 === 電機工程系 === 92 === The ApoE knockout mice are adopted as the animal model for clinical experiments to evaluate the potential therapeutic effects of some medicinal compounds on atherosclerosis. The artery is divided into three layers. The interior layer is named intima and the middle layer is named media. The area of lesions, the ratio of the lesion area and the artery area, the thickness of intima and media, and the variation of lumen diameter and area are evaluated or measured for the characterization of atherosclerosis. The computerized image analysis system for aortic inter-surface and tissue sections has been developed in this study to characterize the atherosclerotic lesions. The techniques of colors model transformation, automatic histogram thresholding, local image enhancement, and noise elimination of image processing are applied to help enhancing the images of artery and lesions. The specific features are characterized for succeeding clinical analyses. By using Mann-Whitney testing, the difference of quantitative features between the contrast group and experiment group are obvious significance in statistics. This system has been successfully applied to characterize most of the images. The functions of 3D drawing in Matlab are applied in this system to simulate the virtual 3D wire frame of artery. It is helpful for clinical researchers to realize the relationships of anatomical positions of plagues and arterial wall. In the future, the performance of the system would be improved by investigating appropriate techniques of image processing for further helping the clinical researches.