1. Imaging the event-prone coronary artery plaque
Journal of Nuclear Cardiology | Official Journal of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology
Imaging the event-prone coronary artery plaque
Andreas A. Giannopoulos MD, Dominik C. Benz MD,
Christoph Gräni MD, Ronny R. Buechel MD
Department of Nuclear Medicine, Cardiac Imaging, University Hospital Zurich, Ramistrasse 100, CH-8091 Zurich, Switzerland
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2. Journal of Nuclear Cardiology | Official Journal of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology
Summary
The majority of acute coronary events are associated with atherosclerotic plaques-related thrombus formation following an acute disruption, that being rupture or erosion, of an event-prone lesion.
Technological advances in cardiovascular imaging have provided novel insights into the formation and role of the event-prone plaques.
Invasive intracoronary optical coherence tomography (OCT) and non-invasive coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA), positron emission tomography (PET) and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) have been investigated for the localization of event-prone plaques.
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3. Journal of Nuclear Cardiology | Official Journal of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology
Imaging Modalities
OCT has excellent accuracy for vulnerable plaque detection vs. histology tethered however with a number of false-positive results.
CCTA offers a variety of morphological features that have been shown to identify patients and plaques at particular risk for future events (see Figure 1). On a lesion level, several morphological hallmarks have been described that may identify event-prone lesions: low CT attenuation plaque, napkin-ring sign, positive remodeling and spotty calcifications.
18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET is currently the most widely used and validated PET tracer in atherosclerosis imaging (see Figure 2). However, a variety of technical problems remains to be resolved prior to widespread clinical application, particularly with regard to improvements in spatial resolution and cardiac and respiratory motion correction.
CMR does not yet provide clinically relevant techniques for coronary artery plaque assessment, but it remains a promising tool with its inherent advantage of not exerting any radiation to the patient which may be important, particularly with chronology of event-prone plaques in mind that may eventually mandate serial follow-up scanning for assessment and monitoring of disease.
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4. Journal of Nuclear Cardiology | Official Journal of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology
Summary- 2
Figure 1: Routine CCTA of a 51-year-old female patient with atypical chest pain. Volume rendering (A) depicts a coronary lesion with a 60% stenosis in the proximal to mid left anterior descending artery with otherwise normal coronaries. Multiplanar curved (B) and cross-sectional reconstruction (C) show morphological features of a potentially event-prone plaque such as spotty calcifications, positive remodeling (remodeling index 1.7), while color-coded images illustrate areas of low attenuation (blue, <30 Hounsfield units) adjacent to the vessel lumen (green), calcifications (yellow >130 Hounsfield units), and fibrous tissue (purple).
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5. Journal of Nuclear Cardiology | Official Journal of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology
Figure 2: FDG PET/CT of a 59-year-old male patient depicts a plaque in the brachiocephalic artery (A) with focal FDG uptake (B and C) with a target-to-background ratio (TBR) of 2.1. Of note, however, in an FDG PET/CT study performed 11 months earlier the plaque (D) did not show any FDG uptake above background activity (E).
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6. CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Journal of Nuclear Cardiology | Official Journal of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology
CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Advanced invasive and non-invasive imaging modalities have proven to be valuable research tools that have advanced our understanding of event-prone coronary lesions.
Non-invasive CCTA and FDG PET imaging to date are the only modalities that have been show to be feasible for clinical application with additional information for risk stratification.
Notably, no modality has yet proven true benefit clinically nor used in daily routine.
Further refinement or the combination of existing and/or novel imaging modalities are welcome in the perspective of imaging’s potential for early detection of event-prone plaques, enabling clinicians to improve risk stratification and thus paving the way for individualized therapy.
Copyright American Society of Nuclear Cardiology