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Imaging High-Risk Atherosclerotic Plaques with PET

  • Imaging (Q Truong, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

Atherosclerotic disease, a primary cause of stroke and myocardial infarction, is the most common underlying cause of death worldwide. While atherosclerosis was formerly considered to be a relatively inert structural abnormality, decades of research have since shown that it is a biologically active process, driven by active inflammation. In concert with this conceptual shift, newer strategies to image vascular lesions have evolved. 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging has been validated as a non-invasive tool to characterize atherosclerotic inflammation. It is hypothesized that a combination of structural and biological (e.g., inflammatory) imaging may provide better means to assess clinical risk, to assess efficacy of therapy, and to identify new, effective treatments. Limitations remain, however, and further advances in technology and tracer development are required before FDG PET imaging will contribute a significant clinical impact at the level of the individual patient.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Shawnbir Gogia MD & Ahmed Tawakol MD

  2. Cardiac MR PET CT Program, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Yannick Kaiser MB & Ahmed Tawakol MD

  3. Cardiovascular Division, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Ahmed Tawakol MD

Authors
  1. Shawnbir Gogia MD
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  2. Yannick Kaiser MB
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  3. Ahmed Tawakol MD
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Correspondence to Ahmed Tawakol MD.

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Conflict of Interest

Shawnbir Gogia and Yannick Kaiser each declare no potential conflicts of interest.

Ahmed Tawakol reports grants from Actelion, Genetech, and Takeda and personal fees from Actelion, Amgen, Astra Zeneca, and Takeda.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Imaging

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Gogia, S., Kaiser, Y. & Tawakol, A. Imaging High-Risk Atherosclerotic Plaques with PET. Curr Treat Options Cardio Med 18, 76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-016-0495-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-016-0495-1

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