Progression of coronary atherosclerotic plaque burden and relationship with adverse cardiovascular event in asymptomatic diabetic patients

Fig. 1. Coronary plaque analysis from computed tomography coronary angiography. To obtain quantitative and qualitative patient-specific plaque markers, the plaque burden is analyzed according to tissue attenuation based on Hounsfield Units (a). Example of the longitudinal tracking by an automatically generated curved multiplanar image data reformation along the vessel centerline (b) and corresponding transverse luminal sections perpendicular to the centerline (c and d) provided by the software

Fig. 2. Example of coronary calcification progression at serial coronary computed tomography angiography. Automatically generated curved multiplanar reformation of image data of the left anterior descending coronary artery in an asymptomatic diabetic 60-year-old man performed in May 2011 (a) and in December 2013 (b). There is progression of dense calcification as well as overall plaque volume, while the stenosis of the coronary artery showed no obvious worsening

Fig. 3. Example of non-calcified plaque progression at serial coronary computed tomography angiography. Automatically generated curved multiplanar reformation of image data of the left anterior descending coronary artery in an asymptomatic diabetic 46-year-old man performed in December 2010 (a) and in June 2013 (c). Displays of transverse sections perpendicular to the centerline show significant progression of the low-attenuation plaque volume from baseline (b) to follow-up (d) while the degree of coronary artery stenosis at this level worsens

Fig. 4. Event-free survival for the composite endpoint (all-cause mortality, non-fatal myocardial infarction, late revascularization) according to CAC-score