Waksman, Ron; Serruys, Patrick W.; Schaar, Johannes

'... ground-breaking handbook ... offers a definitive study of this phenomenon.' - Electronic Review'Handbook of the Vulnerable Plaque is the most comprehensive assessment available in the field. Small in size, it is printed on fine paper, is easy to read, and contains numerous illustrations of imaging scans and pathological specimens that are of the finest quality.' - James Goldstein M.D., New England Journal of Medicine, June 2005

• 1. Definition of the Vulnerable Plaque 2. Platelets and Vulnerable Plaque 3. Pathology of the Vulnerable Plaque 4. Genetic Determinants of Vulnerable Plaque 5. Diagnosis of the Vulnerable Plaque in the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory 6. MRI and Other Non-invasive Imaging Modalities for Atherothrombotic Plaque 7. Vulnerable Plaque: Detection Paradigms from Molecules in Peripheral Blood 8. Emerging Animal Models of the Vulnerable Plaque 9. Intravascular Thermography for the Detection of Vulnerable Plaque: Some Like it Hot! 10. Optical Coherence Tomography 11. Diffuse Reflectance Near-Infrared Spectroscopy as a Clinical Technique to Detect High-Risk Atherosclerotic Plaques 12. Intravascular Ultrasound and Tissue Characterization 13. Non-invasive Visualization of Coronary Atherosclerosis with Multislice Computed Tomography 14. Drug Therapy for the Vulnerable Plaque 15. Photodynamic Therapy 16. Should We Treat the Vulnerable Plaque with Drug-Eluting Stents? 17. Volcano Therapeutics 18. Radio-Frequency Tissue Characterization and Virtual Histology 19. Vulnerable Plaque Detection Using Temperature Heterogeneity Measured with Imetrx Thermocoil Guidewire System 20. Intravascular Thermography Using the Thermacore Thermosense Catheter 21. LightLab Imaging Optical Coherence Tomography 22. Massachusetts General Hospital Optical Coherence Tomography System 23. pH as a marker of Plaque Activity: A Possible Technique for pH Based Detection of Vulnerable Plaque 24. Intravascular Elastography: from Idea to Technique