BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The degree of internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis is an established primary risk factor for embolic stroke. Recent publications suggest that inflammatory features may also play an important role. Our purpose was to correlate acute neurological symptoms with either carotid artery wall enhancement or plaque calcification, on axial CT angiographic source images (CTA-SI) o...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to perform a head-to-head comparison of plaque observations with multislice computed tomography (MSCT) to virtual histology intravascular ultrasound (VH IVUS). BACKGROUND The VH IVUS allows in vivo coronary plaque characterization with high spatial resolution. Noninvasively, plaques may be evaluated with MSCT, but limited data are available. METHODS ...

The detection of calcified plaques is an essential step in the assessment of coronary heart diseases. However, manual plaque segmentation is subjected to intra- and inter-observer variability. We present a novel framework for the automatic detection of calcified coronary plaques in Computed Tomography images. In contrast to the state-of-the-art, both the native and the angio data sets are inclu...

Little is known regarding plaque distribution, composition, and the association with inflammation in type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2). This study aimed to assess the relationship between coronary plaque subtypes and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels. Coronary CTA were performed in 98 symptomatic DM2 patients and 107 non-DM2 patients using a 256-slice CT. The extent and types of plaque as...

AIM Low levels of soluble receptor for advanced glycation end-products (sRAGE) have been reported to be associated with coronary artery disease (CAD) and peripheral atherosclerosis. This study explored the relationship between circulating levels of sRAGE and the characteristics of coronary vessels detected by 64-slice computed tomography angiography (CTA). METHODS In this cross-sectional stud...

The aim of the current study was to explore impact plaque calcification in terms absolute calcified volume (CPV) and context its percentage total at a lesion patient level on progression coronary artery disease. Coronary is an established marker risk future cardiovascular events. Despite this, also considered stability, it increases response medical therapy. This analysis included 925 patients ...

OBJECTIVE Cardiovascular events are high in patients with type 2 diabetes, whereas their risk stratification is more difficult. The higher risk may be related to differences in coronary plaque burden and composition. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether differences in the extent and composition of coronary plaques in patients with and without diabetes can be observed using multisli...

Objectives: Platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) combines the predictive risk of platelet and lymphocyte counts into a single index. PLR has been studied as marker in variety cardiovascular diseases. However, our understanding link between coronary artery disease (CAD) remains limited. The present study aimed to evaluate relationship intensity atherosclerosis patients with suspected CAD. Methods: In...

BACKGROUND Excessive non-subcutaneous fat deposition may impair the functions of surrounding tissues and organs through the release of inflammatory cytokines and free fatty acids. OBJECTIVE We examined the cross-sectional association between non-subcutaneous adiposity and calcified coronary plaque, a noninvasive measure of coronary artery disease burden. DESIGN Participants in the Multi-Eth...

An automated method for evaluating the image quality of calcified plaques with respect to motion artifacts in noncontrast-enhanced cardiac computed tomography (CT) images is introduced. This method involves using linear regression (LR) and artificial neural network (ANN) regression models for predicting two patient-specific, region-of-interest-specific, reconstruction-specific and temporal phas...