ABSTRACT
Coronary angiography, depicting coronary contrast-fi lled lumen, does not provide any information about the atherosclerosis of the coronary vessel wall. Conversely, grayscale IVUS is the modality that has been established as the gold standard for in vivo imaging of the coronary vessel wall. Nevertheless, it is still limited to qualitatively identify the plaque morphology similar as histopathology. To overcome this limitation, new innovative IVUS-based methods, such as virtual histology IVUS and iMAP-IVUS, based on interpretation of the raw radiofrequency analysis, have been developed. This chapter reviews the role of these intra-coronary imaging techniques either in the assessment of coronary plaques or in the evaluation of the drugs and stents effi cacy in atherosclerosis treatment.
