Clinical Utility of Intravascular Ultrasound

Abstract Coronary angiography remains the gold standard imaging method for the detection of coronary artery disease (CAD) and its widespread clinical application has steered patients to a host of beneficial interventional medical therapies. Nonetheless, this approach only provides a two-dimensional image of the contrast-filled arterial lumen and does not visualize the arterial wall where largest atherosclerotic plaques are located. Consequently, angiography often underestimates the degree of intraluminal stenosis and does not gauge the size of the plaque burden itself (Topol and Nissen, 1995).