Progress in atherosclerotic plaque imaging

Table 3 Plaque feature identification through invasive diagnostic imaging

	IVUS	VH	US-E	OCT	IVMRI
Morphology features
Outward remodelling	-1	-1	[137]1	[116]1	-1
Plaque burden	[124]1	-1	[137]1	[116]1	-1
Lipid pool	[126]1	[130]1	-2	-1	-1
Necrotic core	[124]1	[131]1	-2	-1	-1
Composition
Fibro-fatty		[131]1	[141]1	[116]1	[146,147]1
Fibrous plaque		[131]1	[141]1	[116]1
Dense calcium	[128]1	[131]1	[138]1	[116]1
Biological features
Inflammation	-2	[57]1		[122]1	-2
Macrophage infiltration	-2	-2	[141]1	[119]1	-2
Neo-angiogenesis	-2	-2	-2	-2	-2
TFCA	-1	-1	-1	[116]1	-2
TFCA + MI	-2	-2	[137]1	-2	-2

¹Limited clinical experience;

²research in progress. IVUS: Intravascular ultrasound; VH: Virtual histology; OCT: Optical coherence tomography; US-E: Elastography; IVMRI: Intravascular magnetic resonance imaging; MI: Macrophage infiltration; TFCA: Thin fibrous cap atheroma.