New Imaging Technology for Heart Attack Risk Detection

New imaging technology will provide doctors with the ability to detect "inflamed plaque". This will definitely help reduce the number of fatalities occurring due to unpredicted heart attacks.

The so-called "vulnerable plaque" has been compared to a ticking time-bomb hidden inside a healthy-looking patient, who is unaware of the fact that he/she is at great risk of having a heart attack within the next 12 months.

The efforts made by Ioannis A. Kakadiaris, associate professor of computer science at the University

of Houston, Sean O'Malley, doctoral student, and by several leading cardiologists from the Association for Eradication of Heart Attack have resulted in a breakthrough in computational medicine: computer technology capable of alerting physicians to heart attack risks.

The method developed is based on the tendency of the vasa vasorum (the small arteries in the walls of blood vessels) to proliferate in the areas of blood vessel inflammation. The software tool developed makes use of intravascular ultrasound and micro- and nano-sized contrast agents, to generate cross-sectional images of the patient's arteries. The areas with dense vasa vasorum and thus, potential inflammation, are highlighted. The regions of "inflamed plaque" (of blood vessels prone to future rupture and blockage) can thus be detected, and this is essential for the early identification of vulnerable patients.

Steady progress is being made these days towards eradicating heart attack. To support his research, Kakadiaris has been awarded a three-year, $566,350 grant from the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems of the National Science Foundation.

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