1. Tasneem Z. Naqvi, and Ming-Sum Lee JIMG 2014;7:1025-1038
Carotid Plaque Burden Quantitation Three-dimensional plaque data acquired using a VL13-5 probe with a Philips iU22 ultrasound scanner (Philips Healthcare, Andover, Massachusetts). The VL13-5 is a high-resolution linear array with 192 elements that mechanically acquires a series of conventional images covering the whole carotid bifurcation with a sweep in ∼3 to 4 s. These images are automatically combined to create a 4 × 2.5 × 2.5-cm “block” of voxels. XRES is a post-processing technique that removes speckle from the image, yielding an image with better borders and less clutter (noise) in the image. A series of image slices in transverse section are shown by the thumbnails (middle). Each image slice is analyzed with semiautomated software to quantify plaque area, percentage of stenosis, and plaque volume. Plaque areas from all images in the entire image sequence are summed as “plaque burden.” An image of the common carotid artery in one of the slices is shown. The yellow border represents the lumen/intima border; the red border represents the media-adventitia border. The blue border represents the boundary of the plaque. The graph at the bottom of the image depicts the plaque (yellow line) area as a percentage of vessel area (percentage of stenosis), which is maximal in the image slice shown.
Tasneem Z. Naqvi, and Ming-Sum Lee JIMG 2014;7:
American College of Cardiology Foundation