Thickening of the carotid artery wall has been adopted as a surrogate marker of pre-clinical atherosclerosis, which is strongly related to increased cardiovascular risk. The cardioprotective effects of exercise training, including direct effects on vascular function and lumen dimension, have been consistently reported in asymptomatic subjects and those with cardiovascular risk factors and disea...

Carotid endarterectomy is the standard surgical procedure to remove the plaque from inside the artery. The current work is concerned with the mechanical behavior of human carotid arteries subjected to endarterectomy. A 3D tuning-fork-shaped model of the average carotid bifurcation geometry is analysed in the context of the finite element method. A patch is added in the model to cover the incise...

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study was to determine the respective influences of local pulse pressure and mean blood pressure on arterial remodeling in humans at 2 arterial sites: a central, predominantly elastic artery (the common carotid artery) and a peripheral muscular artery (the radial artery). METHODS AND RESULTS Forty-three healthy subjects and 124 never-treated hypertensive pati...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the association between coronary calcification and carotid atherosclerosis. Briefly, 123 patients with suspected coronary artery disease were recruited. The coronary artery calcium score (CACS) was measured and multi‑contrast carotid magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed. Parameters of the carotid morphological measurements were determined a...

PURPOSE To describe a case of atherosclerotic Extracranial internal Carotid Artery Aneurysm (ECAA) with an unique "diverticulum-like" morphological structure, surgically treated and to review the experiences of major referral centers. CASE REPORT A 76-year-old woman presented with persistent dysphagia and transient hypophonia caused by a growing pulsatiling mass of the neck; duplex ultrasonog...

Systemic arterial compliance has been known to increase during healthy pregnancy, whereas, recently, the carotid artery has been reported to stiffen. To clarify this controversy, we simultaneously measured aortic PWV (pulse wave velocity) and carotid artery elastic parameters in a cohort of pregnant women. Twelve normotensive pregnant women were studied longitudinally during the three trimester...

Accurate segmentation of carotid artery plaque in MR images is not only a key part but also an essential step for in vivo plaque analysis. Due to the indistinct MR images, it is very difficult to implement the automatic segmentation. Two kinds of classification models, that is, Bayes clustering and SSVM, are introduced in this paper to segment the internal lumen wall of carotid artery. The comp...