View clinical trials related to Plaque, Atherosclerotic.
Filter by:Imaging the inside of coronary arteries (intravascular imaging) offers great insight into the assessment and treatment of coronary artery disease. Over time, substances such as fat, cholesterol and calcium can build up into 'plaques' in the arteries, causing narrowings or even blockages. These plaques can also rupture, causing cardiovascular events such as heart attacks or strokes. By using ultrasound and infrared technology, intravascular imaging can help assess these plaques, however this is an invasive technique involving angiography. Plaque composition, structure and stability can be affected by inflammation and the stress that the arteries are under. The investigators have pioneered novel minimally-invasive methods for modelling arterial stress using computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA), as well as imaging coronary arterial inflammation using a positron emission tomography (PET) scan. Before embarking upon a large-scale clinical outcome study to determine whether these novel methods can improve risk prediction, the aim is to perform a proof-of-principle study to further develop our methodology for hybrid image analysis, and to validate this technique against high-resolution intravascular imaging as a surrogate marker of histology.
the study will be carried out to standardize normal parameters of vascular duplex ultrasound of the cranial vessels in the Egyptian population.
This is a single-centre prospective trial with 140 patients employing [18F]-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission computed tomography (FDG PET/CT) and advance motion correction and image fusion algorithms to create motion frozen displays and quantify FDG-uptake and thus inflammatory activity in atherosclerotic plaques in the coronary tree. Four groups of patients, two with stable coronary artery disease and two with acute coronary syndrome will be compared and the results of FDG PET/CT will be correlated to results of invasive coronary angiography, intravascular ultrasound / virtual histology, patient risk profile and serum markers of inflammation. The investigators hypothesize that increased FDG accumulation in atherosclerotic plaques shows a positive correlation with inflammatory activity in coronary plaques and markers of plaque vulnerability as well as the risk profile of the patients and serum markers of inflammation. The investigators furthermore hypothesize that FDG PET/CT is able to detect high risk patients and provide an important means for risk stratification and optimization of patient management.