Quantitative assessment of carotid plaque surface irregularities and correlation to cerebrovascular symptoms

Cardiovascular Ultrasound

Research

Baris Kanber¹  Mark A Horsfield¹  Timothy C Hartshorne²  A Ross Naylor²  Thompson G Robinson³  Kumar V Ramnarine⁴ 

[1] Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, England, UK;Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, England, UK;Department of Surgery, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Leicester, England, UK;Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, England, UK;NIHR Biomedical Research Unit for Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, England, UK;Department of Medical Physics, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Sandringham Building, Leicester Royal Infirmary, Infirmary Square, LE1 5WW, Leicester, England, UK;

关键词: Carotid plaque;    Surface irregularities;    Surface irregularity index;    Cerebrovascular symptoms;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-7120-11-38

 received in 2013-08-14, accepted in 2013-11-04,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to determine whether surface irregularities measured from ultrasound images of carotid artery plaques and quantified using a novel method, correlate with the presence of ipsilateral hemispheric cerebrovascular symptoms.MethodsA plaque surface irregularity index (SII) was measured in 47 carotid artery plaques (32 subjects, stenosis range 10% -95%, 49% symptomatic) using ultrasound image sequences spanning several cardiac cycles. The differences in the distribution of SII in plaques with ipsilateral hemispheric symptoms versus those without symptoms and the correlation between the SII of plaques and the degrees of stenosis of the corresponding arteries were assessed. Diagnostic performance of plaque SII was evaluated on its own and in combination with the degree of stenosis.ResultsThe mean SII was significantly greater for plaques with ipsilateral hemispheric symptoms (1.89 radians/mm) than for asymptomatic plaques (1.67 radians/mm, p = 0.03). There was no statistically significant association between the SII and the degree of stenosis (p = 0.30). SII predicted the presence of cerebrovascular symptoms with an accuracy of 66% (sensitivity 65%, specificity 67%) on its own and with an accuracy of 83% (sensitivity 96%, specificity 71%) in combination with the degree of stenosis.ConclusionsQuantitative assessment of carotid plaque surface irregularities using a novel SII parameter correlates with the presence ipsilateral hemispheric cerebrovascular symptoms and may increase diagnostic performance beyond that provided by the degree of stenosis.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Kanber et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.