Atherosclerosis Clinical Trials

Coronary artery disease, caused by the furring up of the heart arteries by atherosclerosis, is a major cause of death in the UK. Despite existing therapies, adverse cardiovascular events remains high, especially in patients who have already had a heart attack, as some of these patients have aggressive atherosclerotic disease. If we could identify these vulnerable patients, then in wider clinical practice in the future we might be able to treat them better with new therapies that can otherwise be expensive or come with a risk of side-effects. Traditionally, the assessment of atherosclerotic disease and the identification of the plaques that will cause heart attacks is performed using invasive imaging - imaging taken by passing a wire into the arteries of the heart that has a camera on its tip. Invasive imaging, however, can be used only in patients with symptoms and has risks. Photon counting (PC) CT is a new CT system that has image quality comparable to invasive imaging and can be used in the community to examine individuals with stable angina symptoms. In this study we aim to compare how well PC-CT detects high-risk plaques compared with invasive imaging and in due course develop a platform that will expedite the analysis of CT images to allow its broad use in the clinical practice.