Cardiovascular disease is our nation's leading cause of death, resulting in an average of one death every 33 seconds and costing an estimated $274,000,000,000 in 1998 in the United States. It is imperative to better understand this disease and to be able to assess prevention and treatment methods. Towards this goal, animal models provide a means to study the pathogenesis and effects of intervention in a highly controlled and reproducible fashion. Noninvasive imaging of atherosclerosis in animal models greatly decreases the number of animals needed in order to assess statistically significant changes. This project concentrates on the development and validation of advanced magnetic resonance imaging methods to noninvasively quantify the progression and regression of atherosclerosis in what is probably the best animal model of atherosclerosis. This model is a mouse that has been genetically engineered to develop hypercholesterolemia. The complex atherosclerosis lesions that form in this mouse are very similar to those found in humans. The size of the arteries and the atherosclerotic lesions that form in this model necessitate the development of microimaging methods that are the purpose of this proposed work. The techniques developed as part of this work would have broad applicability to the imaging of small animals. In particular, the means to image the cardiovascular system, including the incorporation of motion compensating techniques, will be developed. In addition, the baseline (non- disease) appearance for this model will be established and images of atheroma will be correlated with histopathology.
