A novel method for quantifying spatial correlations between patterns of atherosclerosis and hemodynamic factors

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Science
• Biomedical Engineering
• Statistical Modeling

Background:

• Atherosclerosis often presents focally, suggesting a link with hemodynamic factors.
• Current methods lack standardization for quantitatively comparing hemodynamic and lesion distribution maps.
• Existing statistical approaches may overlook assumptions like data independence and linearity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel statistical technique for assessing correlations between hemodynamic forces and atherosclerosis lesion distribution.
• To provide a standardized methodology for comparing spatial maps of disease prevalence and hemodynamic metrics.
• To investigate the relationship between wall shear stress and lesion prevalence in different regions of the aorta.

Main Methods:

• Development of a surrogate data analysis-based statistical technique.
• Utilizing randomized sampling to ensure data point independence.
• Application of the technique to compare lesion prevalence maps with wall shear stress maps in cholesterol-fed rabbits.

Main Results:

• A significant spatial correlation between atherosclerosis and wall shear stress was identified in the proximal descending thoracic aorta.
• This correlation was not observed further downstream in the aorta.
• A borderline significant correlation was found around intercostal branch openings in immature rabbits, but not in mature rabbits.

Conclusions:

• The proposed statistical method offers a robust approach for analyzing the relationship between hemodynamics and focal disease.
• The findings underscore the importance of blood flow in determining atherosclerosis localization.
• Further research is warranted to explore these relationships using advanced statistical techniques.