Study on visualization of defect of internal elastic lamina of arterial wall for diagnosis of very early-stage atherosclerosis

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It would be useful to measure the minute surface roughness of the carotid arterial wall to detect the endothelial damage in the early-stage of atherosclerosis. In conventional ultrasonography, the axial resolution of a B-mode image depends on the ultrasonic wavelength of 150 μm at 10 MHz. Therefore, the surface roughness caused by atherosclerosis in an early stage cannot be measured using a conventional B-mode image obtained by ultrasonography because the roughness is10-20 μm. We have realized accurate transcutaneous estimation of such a minute surface profile using the lateral motion of the carotid arterial wall, which is estimated by block matching of received ultrasonic signals. The proposed method was proved to be able to measure minute surface profile of about 10 μm by measuring a phantom, which had a saw tooth profile on its surface. Furthermore, the surface roughness of the carotid arterial walls of 10-50 μm were measured reproducibly for three healthy subjects (24-, 23-, and 23-year-old males).