Estimation of a Coronary Vessel Wall Deformation with High-Frequency Ultrasound Elastography

To my beautiful angel, Ipek. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis. It will be tough to thank them enough, but I will nonetheless try. First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Paul J. Benkeser for his continuing support and guidance throughout my study. I also want to extend my appreciation for his patience, great understanding and very nice personality. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Anthony J. Yezzi for his guidance since the beginning of my research. Having taken his PDE class was a cornerstone of my doctoral study, where I learnt about active contours. This thesis would not have been possible without his direction and help. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Oskar Skrinjar for his detailed and constructive comments throughout this work. His Medical Image Processing course was one of the best courses I had ever taken in my life, which also helped me improve my programming skills in MATLAB a lot. his invaluable efforts in designing our experimental setup and his tutoring me on how to take coronary arteries out of the heart. I also thank Mr. Hollifield and Hollifield Farms for letting me use the porcine hearts, an integral part of my research. iv I cannot finish without saying how grateful I am with my family. I sincerely thank my parents, Serpil and Levent Kasimoglu, and my brother, Talat, for their love, encouragement and support, and my grandparents for their blessings. My parents have always put education as a first priority in my life, and raised me to set high goals for myself. They have supported and encouraged me to do my best in all matters of life all the time, and have always been there for me as an unfaltering support. Finally, I've come to address my appreciation to my wife, Ipek Z. Kasimoglu, who has been my " other half " for more than ten years since high school. During this period, of course we had some difficult times, but we always managed to get them over. Although we were physically far away from each other for most of my Ph.D. study, I felt that she was always near me whenever I needed her. Without her love and support, I couldn't have made it. Once again, I would like to thank …