BACKGROUND Computed tomographic (CT) angiography provides accurate noninvasive assessment for coronary artery stenosis. The ability of CT angiography to determine plaque morphology remains unclear. METHODS Twelve patients undergoing intravascular ultrasound for clinical indications underwent CT angiography for the evaluation of plaque morphology. Plaque morphology was classified as (1) soft, ...

BACKGROUND This study characterizes the distribution and components of plaque structure by presenting a three-dimensional blood-vessel modelling with the aim of determining mechanical properties due to the effect of lipid core and calcification within a plaque. Numerical simulation has been used to answer how cap thickness and calcium distribution in lipids influence the biomechanical stress on...

PURPOSE To investigate the ex vivo performance of high-resolution computed tomography (CT) for quantitative assessment of percentage diameter stenosis in coronary arteries compared to histopathology. MATERIALS AND METHODS High-resolution CT was performed in 26 human heart specimens after the injection of iodinated contrast media into the coronary arteries. Coronary artery plaques were visuall...

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) is an accurate non-invasivemethod for thedetectionof andespecially rulingoutobstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) in appropriately selected patients. After its arrival, it has become possible to evaluate both coronary anatomy and functional significance of stenosis non-invasively by combined or hybrid coronary CTA and myocardial perfusion imagi...

OBJECTIVE To comparatively evaluate black-blood coronary arterial wall MRI and 64-multidetector computed tomography (64-MDCT) for detection and classification of coronary artery plaques. METHODS We included 15 patients with confirmed coronary artery plaques in the proximal or middle segments of coronary arteries by 64-MDCT, who underwent black-blood coronary wall MRI at 1.5 T within 10 days. ...

PURPOSE Different in-plane resolutions have been used for carotid 3T MRI. We compared the reproducibility, as well as the within- and between reader variability of high and routinely used spatial resolution in scans of patients with atherosclerotic carotid artery disease. Since no consensus exists about the optimal segmentation method, we analysed all imaging data using two different segmentati...

Background The differentiation of atherosclerotic plaque components in the carotid arteries with MRI has been successfully demonstrated. The detection of plaque calcification by MRI, however has been challenging. In addition, few studies have evaluated the ability of MRI to characterize atherosclerotic plaques in human coronary arteries (1). Here we use a combination of T1, T2 and ultrashort TE...

AIMS We aimed to compare coronary artery disease (CAD) at the time of a first acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in type II diabetic and non-diabetic patients by coronary angiography and by optical coherence tomography (OCT). METHODS AND RESULTS Two different patient populations with a first ACS were enrolled for the angiographic (167 patients) and the OCT (72 patients) substudy. Angiographic CAD ...

"Healthy " ambulant subjects whose ages ranged from 5 to 66 years were selected from hospital staff and outpatients, according to the following criteria: (1) absence of urinary symptoms, (2) absence of past history of urinary symptoms or previous bilharzial infection, (3) absence of bilharzial ova in a midday specimen of urine, (4) viable urinary bacteria count of less than 10,000/ml., and (5) ...