Elevated endothelial permeability is a precursor to atherosclerosis. Imaging macromolecule uptake in the artery wall can be used to detect and investigate early structural and functional endothelial dysfunction. Current techniques make use of destructive post-mortem analysis of tissue, limiting studies to animal models only. MR imaging of the transport of an albumin-binding contrast agent (Gadofosveset) could be used instead. We employed a mathematical model to differentiate between the bound and unbound fraction of the contrast agent thus making this method a promising non-invasive technique to measure permeability in humans for the first time.
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