Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the leading causes of mortality in the Western world. Plaque development in the coronary arteries has a very complex mechanism, and its progression is influenced by mechanical, biochemical, and biological factors. For example, previous studies linked plaque development to wall shear stress. Shear stress is dependent on the vessel geometry. Plaques are more likely to develop at the inner curvature of a vessel and at vessel bifurcations. Conventional invasive coronary angiography is the reference standard for coronary artery...

Subjects and Data Acquisition Subjects were participants in a study on non-invasive cardiac imaging in the vascular patient population, and were recruited from the vascular outpatient clinic. In total, 73 patients (76.3% males, mean age 64.8 ± 8.1 years) could be included. 3D datasets of the heart and coronary arteries were acquired on a dual-source CT scanner (SOMATOM Definition, Siemens,Erlangen,Germany) using a standardized contrast-enhanced cardiac scanning protocol. Table pitch was adapted to the heart rate of the patient. Images were reconstructed as consecutive 0.6 mm...

Curvature of segments with significant stenosis was larger than in case of non-significantly/non-stenosed segments. Furthermore, curvature for calcified and mixed-plaque segments was significantly larger than for no-plaque segments, but not significantly different from the soft-plaque group. In artery-based analysis, curvature was significantly associated with the presence of plaque, but not with the presence of significant stenosis. There were no associations between tortuosity and the presence of plaque or stenosis both in the segment and artery based analyses. An example of curvature and tortuosity of the...

Inthis study, we used non-invasive coronary CT angiography measurements to assess the relationship between coronary artery geometry and the presence of coronary plaques. We found that coronary curvature is associated with the severity of coronary artery disease. Possibly, coronary curvature is involved in the predilection sites of plaque development. If so, curvature may in the future be used to predict risk of coronary plaque development at early stages. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm this.

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