[Diagnosis of very early arteriosclerosis vascular changes using Duplex sonography]

The technical evolution of ultrasonic equipment provides a high resolution imaging analysis of the vessel wall and thereby offers new possibilities in diagnosing very early atherosclerotic changes. The typical B-mode image in human and animal arteries shows parallel wall contures enclosing a hypoechoic space. In this study in Vitro- and in Vivo-experiments in rabbit aortas document the distance between these contures correlating histologically with a high cholesterol diet caused a broadening of the hypoechoic space in the rabbit aortic vessel wall. The data demonstrate that high resolution Duplex Sonography is a usefull noninvasive approach for the detection of very early atherosclerotic changes in arterial vessel walls in a stage before plaques can be identified.