Atheromatous plaque hemorrhage: Early detection and its impact on the management of patients with carotid artery disease

Abstract

Plaque hemorrhage is a feature of vulnerable atheromatous plaques. It has strong associations with cerebrovascular ischemic events. Early detection of such a significant plaque characteristic is critical and potentially beneficial for their aggressive management. MRI is a noninvasive, nonionizing way of identifying such unstable plaques. The paper under evaluation presents a new pulse sequence for the imaging of plaque hemorrhage. This study demonstrates that 3D high-spatial-resolution MRI effectively permits detection of plaque hemorrhage location. This may facilitate improving our risk-stratification criteria for management of patients with carotid artery disease. © 2009 Expert Reviews Ltd.