ABSTRACT
Coronary angiography has been the gold standard for assessment of coronary anatomy since first performed by Mason Sones in 1958. However, the coronary angiogram has many limitations; it gives information about the patency of the arterial lumen but no information about the vessel wall. Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is based upon the same principles used for ultrasound elsewhere in the body. It utilises a monorail catheter with an ultrasound transducer at its tip to generate a two-dimensional cross-sectional image of the coronary artery similar to a histologic cross section. Depending on the manufacturer, current IVUS catheters in use range from 20 to 60 MHz for coronary imaging and 10 to 20 MHz for peripheral imaging. The IVUS catheter has a single transducer element located at its tip that is rotated by an external motor drive attached to the proximal end of the catheter at 1800 rpm.
