An objective characterization of atherosclerotic lesion: an alternative method to identify unstable plaque

The aim of this study was to evaluate a computer-assisted technique to characterize atherosclerotic plaque.

In 9 subjects (7 men, 2 women; mean age 33 years), known anatomic areas (carotid, fat, muscle, iliotibial tract, and tibia) were scanned with an Acuson duplex ultrasound machine with 72 machine settings. The ultrasound images of these anatomic areas were recorded on magneto-optical disks. Echo amplitude statistics were obtained, and the mean pixel value (MPV) was used to assess the level of echogenicity. The ideal settings of this particular scanner for optimal discrimination between these tissues types were identified by the Heuristic Index of Discrimination. With these settings, carotid artery scanning was performed on 17 patients (15 men, 2 women; mean age 65 years), and the image analysis of their ultrasound carotid plaques was compared with their histological findings.

In this study, discrimination between the selected tissues was found to be optimal when the controls were set at log 40 dB, 0/2/0, and gain of -5 dB. The MPV of the carotid specimens scanned at this setting correlated significantly with the histological findings (Spearman correlation, P=0.002).

Computer-assisted image analysis to give the MPV is a technique that may be used to identify unstable atherosclerotic plaques reliably.