B-mode ultrasonography of the carotid artery is a non-invasive, informative and reproducible technique used for the assessment of prevalence and course of atherosclerosis in a variety of clinical conditions. Visualization of intima-media complex, atherosclerotic plaques, rough arterial wall and calcifications of the carotid artery may be useful for the assessment of atherosclerotic burden. The ...

Periodontal disease is associated with endothelial dysfunction of the brachial artery and hemodynamic alterations of the common carotid artery. Periodontal therapy improves endothelial function. It is not known if it is able also to improve the hemodynamics of the carotid artery. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the efficacy of 2 different periodontal treatments on carotid hemodynam...

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of the carotid artery are constructed from contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) using a deformable model and a surface-merging algorithm. Physiologic flow conditions are obtained from cine phase-contrast MRA at two slice locations below and above the carotid bifurcation. The methodology was tested on image data from a rigid flow-throug...

Background: Recent advances in carotid artery wall imaging have seen a transition from 2D to more efficient 3D imaging. However, a disadvantage of 3D scans is their longer time to complete the acquisition, making them more susceptible to motion artefacts, particularly swallowing and bulk head motion during the long acquisition time. Whilst, in still the more commonly used 2D sequences, these mo...

Stiffening of the barosensory vessel wall in hypertension has been suggested to play a role in the associated baroreflex impairment. The carotid distensibility-BRS (baroreflex sensitivity) relationship, however, has not been studied in pre-eclampsia, a condition where hypertension is spontaneously reversible. Twelve normotensive pregnant women and 12 patients with pre-eclampsia matched for mate...

We developed a completely automated technique for carotid wall segmentation and intima – media thickness (IMT) measurement in ultrasound images based on the watershed transform. Morphological operators are used to extract the foreground markers for performing marker-based watershed segmentation. The watershed basin containing the carotid artery is automatically extracted. The far wall of the ar...

Background and Purpose The relation between arterial wall (intimal-medial) thickness and lumen narrowing is complex and has previously been studied predominantly at autopsy. B-mode ultrasound affords the opportunity to visualize both wall and lumen of the extracranial carotid arteries in vivo. Several studies have quantified the relation of various independent variables to wall thickness of car...

background: the incidence of stroke is 2.1-5.2% in bypass surgery patients with a mortality of 0-38%. this study was designed to evaluate the incidence of significant carotid artery stenosis and its related risk factors in candidates for coronary artery bypass graft (cabg) surgery. methods: 1045 consecutive candidates for cabg underwent carotid artery doppler examination in a prospective study....

BACKGROUND This study was designed to investigate the effects of lipid-lowering by simvastatin on human atherosclerotic lesions. METHODS AND RESULTS Eighteen asymptomatic hypercholesterolemic patients with documented aortic and/or carotid atherosclerotic plaques were selected for the study. A total of 35 aortic and 25 carotid artery plaques were detected. Serial black-blood MRI of the aorta a...

In recent years, the incidence of cardiovascular disease is increasing year by year in China, and ischemic cerebrovascular disease caused by atherosclerosis has become a key cause to disability and death. In this paper, a carotid atherosclerosis evaluation scheme based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was proposed. First, blood vessel wall MRI and digital subtraction angiography (DSA) were s...