Steen Fjord Pedersen1, William P. Paaske2,
Troels Thiem3, Steffen Ringgaard4, Samuel A Thryse4,
Won Yong Kim5
1Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus,
Denmark; 21Dept. of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery T, Aarhus
University Hospital, Skejby, Denmark; 3Dept. of Cardiology, Aarhus
University Hospital, Skejby, Denmark; 4MR-center, Aarhus
University Hospital, Skejby, Denmark; 5Dept. of Cardiology, and
MR-center, Aarhus University Hospital, Skejby, Denmark
Endothelial
damage and angiogenesis are essential in atherosclerotic plaque development
and destabilization .We sought to examine whether contrast enhanced MRI using
gadofosveset would enable the detection of endothelial damage and neovessels
in balloon injured porcine coronary arteries. MRI showed contrast enhancement
of the injured vs. the non-injured control artery with a significant increase
in the diameter of (3019 % versus
48%; P=0.01). Ex-vivo coronary vessel wall MRI contrast enhancement was in
agreement with extravasated Evans blue with a kappa value of 0.64
(p<0.001). and there was a linear correlation between coronary MRI
contrast-enhancement and microvessel density (r=0.78, p<0.001).