MRI scan that can predict stroke risk has 'promise to save lives'

But is intravascular photoacoustic (IVPA) imaging better? 

Or sodium fluoride that had been tagged with a tiny amount of a radioactive tracer and then using PET scans?

I expect your doctor and hospital should be monitoring and updating their protocols to identify stroke risks from unstable plaque. That is if your doctor and hospital are not incompetent.  Do they even know about IVPA and sodium fluoride tracing?  A fucking protocol is needed rather than thousands of doctors trying to analyze stuff they know nothing about.

MRI scan that can predict stroke risk has 'promise to save lives'

Scientists at Oxford University develop non-invasive technique to measure amount of cholesterol in carotid plaques

There are an annual 100,000 strokes in the UK. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA 

Haroon SiddiqueWednesday 23 August 2017 19.01 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 23 August 2017 19.45 EDTA new type of MRI scan can predict the risk of having a stroke, researchers have said in a study.The non-invasive technique, developed by scientists at the University of Oxford, predicts whether plaques in the carotid arteries are rich in cholesterol and therefore more likely to cause a stroke.  Carotid arteries supply the brain with blood. The rupture of fatty plaques can block them and possibly starve the brain of oxygen, causing potentially debilitating and life-threatening strokes. A quarter of the more than 100,000 strokes in the UK each year are caused by carotid plaques. Dr Luca Biasiolli, the co-author of the study, said: “When someone goes to hospital having suffered a minor stroke, it’s vital that doctors know whether the patient might be at risk of a further stroke, which could be fatal. “Being able to quantify cholesterol in carotid plaques is a really exciting prospect, as this new MRI technique could help doctors to identify patients at higher risk of stroke and make more informed decisions on their treatments.” The study, published in the journal JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging on Thursday, created a test that produces a quantitative result, whereas traditionally the risk of stroke is measured by the size of the plaque in the carotid artery. At present, if a plaque is deemed too big it is removed, but the researchers say fatty plaques that are not large yet have a high risk of rupturing can be missed. 

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The scientists used the new MRI scan to measure the amount of cholesterol in the carotid plaques of 26 patients scheduled for surgery. After the plaques were surgically removed, the team looked at the actual cholesterol content in each plaque and found that the new technique was accurate – the more cholesterol they detected within the plaque, the greater the risk of a stroke. The same team confirmed and extended their findings in another study on 50 people published in PLOS ONE.
Prof Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the study, said: “This exciting research opens up the possibility that in the future we may be able to more accurately identify people with carotid plaques that are likely to rupture and cause a stroke.
“These patients can then be treated earlier – for example, with surgery to remove the plaque – while others might be spared surgery altogether. More research is now necessary before this advance can come into routine clinical practice. However, if successful this technique has the promise to save lives.”

New imaging technology allows scientists to peer even deeper into fatty arteries

No idea what would be done if fatty arteries were found, but it sounds good for us.
http://www.mdlinx.com/internal-medicine/top-medical-news/article/2016/05/20/3
Researchers demonstrate how a highly–sensitive photoacoustic catheter probe has the potential to help better identify heart disease.
A new imaging system known as intravascular photoacoustic (IVPA) imaging that produces three–dimensional images of the insides of arteries, however, has the potential to help doctors diagnose plaques on the brink of rupturing. But scientists have struggled to develop imaging instruments that meet clinical requirements while illuminating arteries to a useful depth and at quick enough speeds. Now, a team of researchers from Purdue University, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana, USA and the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Shanghai, China, have improved upon previous instruments, developing a new IVPA catheter design with collinear overlap between optical and acoustic waves with a tiny probe. The design can greatly improve the sensitivity and imaging depth of IVPA imaging, revealing fatty arteries in all of their unctuous detail. IVPA imaging works by measuring ultrasound signals from molecules exposed to a light beam from a fast–pulsing laser. The new probe allows the optical beam and sound wave to share the same path all the way during imaging — that's the "collinear" overlap part — rather than cross overlap as in previous designs. This increases the sensitivity and the imaging depth of the instrument, allowing for high–quality IVPA imaging of a human coronary artery over 6 mm in depth — from the lumen, the normally open channel within arteries, to perivascular fat, which surrounds the outside of most arteries and veins. The research findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.