[Application of intravascular ultrasound imaging to carotid artery]

Although conventional angiography is utilized to assess the extent and severity of carotid artery disease, it yields only a silhouette of the vessel lumen. Intravascular ultrasound imaging (IUI), which has been developed for imaging the coronary artery, can supplement angiography by providing a tomographic perspective of the vessel wall structure. Therefore, we applied IUI (4.3F, 30MHz) to the carotid artery to evaluate the extent of arteriosclerosis, and we were successful in imaging the perspective of the carotid artery. Our results suggest that IUI is a useful device to evaluate the extent of atherosclerosis of the carotid artery.