Atherosclerosis is a progressive disease characterized bythe accumulation of lipids and fibrous elements in the arteries and is a leading cause of heart disease and stroke in developed and developing countries.1 Animal models have become increasingly important tools for addressing key mechanistic and therapeutic questions that cannot be an-swered from human studies of atherosclerosis. However, the small-scale vascular structures in genetically engineered mice require labor-intensive histomorphometric techniques to quantify lesions. Recently, a new technique has emerged to image ex vivo blocks of soft tissue by staining tissue with metal solu-tions, then scanning with a microscopic computed tomog-raphy (microCT) instrument (Figure I in the online-only Data Supplement).2 This technique was originally applied to the study of the developing heart in embryos3 and
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Martinez et al. (2009) studied this question.