30 results about "Fibrous cap" patented technology

An expandable stent is implanted in a body lumen, such as a coronary artery, peripheral artery, or other body lumen for treating an area of vulnerable plaque. The invention provides for a an intravascular stent having a plurality of cylindrical rings connected by undulating links. The stent has a high degree of flexibility in the longitudinal direction, yet has adequate vessel wall coverage and radial strength sufficient to hold open an artery or other body lumen. A central section is positioned between distal and proximal sections and is aligned with the area of vulnerable plaque to enhance growth of endothelial cells over the fibrous cap of the vulnerable plaque to reinforce the area and reduce the likelihood of rupture.

An expandable stent is implanted in a body lumen, such as a coronary artery, peripheral artery, or other body lumen for treating an area of vulnerable plaque. The invention provides for a an intravascular stent having a plurality of cylindrical rings connected by undulating links. The stent has a high degree of flexibility in the longitudinal direction, yet has adequate vessel wall coverage and radial strength sufficient to hold open an artery or other body lumen. A central section is positioned between distal and proximal sections and is aligned with the area of vulnerable plaque to enhance growth of endothelial cells over the fibrous cap of the vulnerable plaque to reinforce the area and reduce the likelihood of rupture.

The invention provides a plaque stability determination method and system based on the optical coherence tomography. The system comprises an image collection module, an image reception module, an image-processing module and a result display module, wherein the image collection module is used for acquiring an coronary-artery image and producing an image signal; the image reception module is used for receiving the image signal produced by the image collection module and transmitting the image signal to the image processing module; the image processing module can be used for processing and analyzing the received image signal; the result display module is used for displaying the analyzed result of the image processing module. The image processing module comprises the sub-modules of a fibrous cap information acquisition module, a macrophage information acquisition module and a lipid nucleus information acquisition module. The method solves the problem that the lipid nucleus size parameter cannot be acquired using the traditional optical coherence tomography, and can not only guarantee the optical coherence tomography with a high resolution result, but also add information about the lipid nucleus size and plaque stresses.

The present invention generally provides improved devices, systems, and methods for measuring materials with NMR and / or MRI. Exemplary embodiments provide a sensor array for NMR mapping of the material. For example tissue can be measured with the sensor array mounted on a probe body having a distal portion which can be inserted through a minimally invasive aperture. While many tissues can be measured and / or diagnosed, one exemplary embodiment includes a probe adapted for insertion into a lumen of a blood vessel. The sensor array can provide improved spatial resolution of tissue and / or tissue structures positioned near the sensor array to diagnose potentially life threatening diseases, for example a fibrous cap covering a vulnerable plaque. In specific embodiments, the sensors are attached to an expandable member, for example a balloon, which can be inflated to urge the probe sensors radially outward to position the sensors near the tissue structures.

A method for characterizing the risk associated with atherosclerosis is disclosed. The method uses one or more images of cross-sections of the artery or other vessel of interest to identify and locate components of the atherosclerotic deposit, including any hemorrhage, necrotic core, and calcification, and to determine the status and composition of the fibrous cap. In one embodiment, high resolution MRI images are utilized, although other imaging modalities may alternatively be used. A simple scoring system is applied that accounts for the presence of these components and more heavily weights the presence of these components in the juxtaluminal portion of the deposit. The status of the fibrous cap (intact or ruptured) and the composition of the fibrous cap (collagen or mixed tissue) are also incorporated into a final atherosclerosis risk score.

An intravascular stent assembly for implantation in a body lumen, such as a coronary artery, is designed to treat a lesion with vulnerable plaque by reducing the fibrous cap stresses. The stent includes distal, proximal, and center sections where the center section is configured to treat the vulnerable plaque. The stent consists of radially expandable cylindrical rings generally aligned on a common longitudinal stent axis and either directly connected or interconnected by one or more interconnecting links placed so that the stent is flexible in the longitudinal direction while providing high degrees of radial strength and vessel scaffolding.

A system including a hierarchical analytics framework that can utilize a first set of machine learned algorithms to identify and quantify a set of biological properties utilizing medical imaging data is provided. System can segment the medical imaging data based on the quantified biological properties to delineate existence of perivascular adipose tissue. The system can also segment the medical imaging data based on the quantified biological properties to determine a lumen boundary and / or determine a cap thickness based on a minimum distance between the lumen boundary and LRNC regions.

An intravascular stent assembly for implantation in a body lumen, such as a coronary artery, is designed to treat a lesion with vulnerable plaque by reducing the fibrous cap stresses. A polymeric sleeve having first and second ends interconnects a first metallic stent and a second metallic stent. The first end is bonded to a distal end region of the first stent and the second end to a proximal end region of the second stent. The polymeric sleeve can be loaded with a therapeutic drug or agent to further control local thrombosis and / or induce healing if the plaque fibrous cap ruptures during or after implantation. Methods of making an intravascular stent assembly for the treatment of vulnerable plaque are also provided.

An expandable stent is implanted in a body lumen, such as a coronary artery, peripheral artery, or other body lumen for rupturing a fibrous cap to controllably release vulnerable plaque. The invention provides for a an intravascular stent having a plurality of cylindrical rings connected by links. The stent includes struts and links of varying strengths about the circumference of the stent. The weaker struts and links require less force to open and, hence, may apply more stress to rupture the fibrous cap while the stronger struts and links protect the healthy portions of the body lumen. In another embodiment, the stent may include stress concentrators positioned on outer surfaces of the links. The stress concentrators are aligned with the fibrous cap prior to stent expansion so that upon stent expansion, the stress concentrators induce stress to rupture the fibrous cap, thereby releasing the vulnerable plaque.

A system includes an in vivo imaging device for imaging a blood vessel with a resolution level of at least fifty micrometers. The in vivo imaging device is capable of detecting a microcalcification in a fibrous cap of an atheroma. The system also includes a processor for receiving an image of the blood vessel from the in vivo imaging device. The processor uses the image to determine whether the blood vessel contains at least one microcalcification within the fibrous cap. In some embodiments, the processor is configured and arranged to predict a risk of rupture of the fibrous cap based, at least in part, on the presence of the at least one microcalcification. In some embodiments, treatment of a patient is based on the determination from the imaging whether the blood vessel includes at least one microcalcification within the fibrous cap of the atheroma.

The invention discloses the use of arsenic trioxide in the preparation of medicine for treating advanced atherosclerosis. The present invention introduces arsenic trioxide into the treatment of advanced atherosclerosis for the first time, uses its mechanism of promoting autophagy of macrophages in plaques, reduces the area of ​​lipid core and the infiltration of inflammatory cells, increases the thickness of fibrous cap, and promotes plaque Block stability, to treat atherosclerosis. The proposal of the present invention provides a new type of non-invasive and safe treatment method for the treatment of clinical patients with advanced atherosclerosis in addition to invasive treatments such as surgery. While improving the survival rate and quality of life of patients, it also reduces the risk of acute cardiovascular disease. It reduces the incidence of incidents, reduces the manpower, material and financial resources consumed by surgery, and reduces the medical and economic burden on families and society. In summary, the present invention provides a new drug for the clinical treatment of advanced atherosclerosis, which can reduce the occurrence of acute cardiovascular events and has certain clinical significance.

A stent for implantation in a body lumen for protecting from rupture a fibrous cap in order to treat vulnerable plaque. One embodiment of the stent achieves staged expansion through stronger and weaker circumferential regions, and includes optional anchors positioned at the circumferential transition between the stronger and weaker regions. During the first stage expansion, the weaker region expands moving the anchors laterally apart. The anchors straddle the fibrous cap and embed into the vessel wall. The second stage expansion of the stent exerts gentler stresses by the weaker region against the fibrous cap while the stronger region exerts greater stresses on the remainder of the vessel wall to open the vessel.

The invention discloses a method for constructing an atherosclerotic vulnerable plaque mouse model. The method is to obtain a low-density lipoprotein receptor gene (LDLR) knockout mouse with a heterozygous point mutation of the fibrillin 1 (Fibrillin-1, Fbn1) gene by crossing. The present invention for the first time Fbn1 C1039G+ / ‑ Point mutations introduced into LDLR ‑ / ‑ Mouse genome, combining the characteristics of the two genotypes, the method is simple and easy, and can form a large lipid core, a large number of inflammatory cells, a typical thin fibrous cap, abundant new blood vessels and intraplaque hemorrhage, outward remodeling of blood vessels, etc. The characteristic vulnerable plaque, and it can be observed in the model that it is similar to human plaque rupture, which leads to the occurrence of acute cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. It has a high molding rate and good repeatability, providing a good animal basis for drug research and improvement of device consumables, and a good platform for exploring the mechanism of atherosclerosis.

The present invention relates to a method and device for automatic detection of thin fibrous cap plaques based on cardiovascular OCT images. The method includes: using N OCT images to establish an OCT image data set; Test atlas; use the OCT training atlas containing thin fiber cap plaque information to train the network to be trained to form a post-training network, which is used to detect and classify the OCT test atlas; use the post-training network to detect and classify the OCT test atlas Thin fibrous cap plaque detection and thin fibrous cap plaque classification are performed on the test atlas; thin fibrous cap plaques are prompted according to the classification results. The present invention uses the trained network to extract features from the image, realizes automatic detection and identification of whether there is a thin fibrous cap plaque on the OCT image, does not require manual participation, and is convenient for doctors to accurately analyze the OCT image, and the detection accuracy is relatively high. High, with better robustness and detection speed.