We propose amodified Perona-Malik diffusion (PMD) filter to enhance a coronary plaque boundary by considering the conditions\npeculiar to an intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) image. The IVUS image is commonly used for a diagnosis of acute coronary\nsyndrome (ACS). The IVUS image is however very grainy due to heavy speckle noise. When the normal PMD filter is applied\nfor speckle noise reduction in the IVUS image, the coronary plaque boundary becomes vague. For this problem, we propose a\nmodified PMD filter which is designed in special reference to the coronary plaque boundary detection. It can then not only reduce\nthe speckle noise but also enhance clearly the coronary plaque boundary. After applying the modifiedPMDfilter to the IVUS image,\nthe coronary plaque boundaries are successfully detected further by applying the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. The accuracy of the\nproposed method has been confirmed numerically by the experiments.
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