title: The vulnerable, or high-risk, atherosclerotic plaque: noninvasive MR imaging for characterization and assessment.
abstract: "Vulnerable" plaques are atherosclerotic plaques that have a high likelihood to cause thrombotic complications, such as myocardial infarction or stroke. Plaques that tend to progress rapidly are also considered to be vulnerable. Besides luminal stenosis, plaque composition and morphology are key determinants of the likelihood that a plaque will cause cardiovascular events. Noninvasive magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has great potential to enable characterization of atherosclerotic plaque composition and morphology and thus to help assess plaque vulnerability. A classification for clinical, as well as pathologic, evaluation of vulnerable plaques was recently put forward in which five major and five minor criteria to define vulnerable plaques were proposed. The purpose of this review is to summarize the status of MR imaging with regard to depiction of the criteria that define vulnerable plaques by using existing MR techniques. The use of MR imaging in animal models and in human disease in various vascular beds, particularly the carotid arteries, is presented.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA. Tobias_Saam@med.uni-muenchen.de
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Saam
authors.forename: Thomas S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Hatsukami
authors.forename: Norihide
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Takaya
authors.forename: Baocheng
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.forename: Hunter
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Underhill
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Kerwin
authors.forename: Jianming
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.forename: Marina S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Ferguson
authors.forename: Chun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yuan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D050197:Atherosclerosis / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D003287:Contrast Media; D004198:Disease Susceptibility; D006801:Humans; D007249:Inflammation; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D009336:Necrosis; D018570:Risk Assessment
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media