This small grant for exploratory research will support development of novel techniques for extending the ability of computed tomography (CT) imaging to be used as a front-line non-invasive screening tool for detection of cardiovascular vulnerable patients. Coronary heart disease (CHD) is still the major cause of death in most of the developed countries, including the United States. The grant will develop and validate the computational framework that will allow mining CT imaging data to extract information that will allow the detection and classification of plaque. This will in turn lead to the development of a quantitative method for the cumulative risk assessment of vulnerable patients.
