qian zhao1, Xihai Zhao2, Feiyu Li2, Qingjun Wang1, Zulong Cai1, Chun Yuan2, Jianming Cai1
1Department of radiology, PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China; 2Department of radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Atherosclerosis has been shown a systematic disease which often involves multiple arterial vascular beds. Recently, a number of studies demonstrated a significant correlation between coronary and carotid atherosclerosis. This study sought to evaluate the association between coronary calcification and carotid artery morphology. The results showed moderate to strong correlation between coronary calcium score detected by CT and carotid morphological measurements by MRI. It indicates that patients with high coronary calcium score may have big plaque burden in carotid arteries. Coronary calcium score as a marker of coronary disease is potentially capable of predicting carotid atherosclerosis.