TeraRecon has made available its AQPlaque suite of vascular analysis tools for its Aquarius product line. The toolkit enables researchers to investigate and evaluate a range of parameters from CT or MR images of vascular structures including coronary arteries, as a standard feature from standalone Aquarius Workstations or the AquariusNET thin-client software.

Parameters relating to plaque constitution and morphology, including the overall extent of wall remodeling, luminal encroachment and the density distribution of CT values within the plaque, can be characterized with the AQPlaque tools.

On the Aquarius Workstation, AQPlaque is integrated into the vascular analysis package and provides tools to delineate the vessel outer wall versus surrounding tissue and lumen. A set of HU or intensity ranges can then be defined to visually delineate different structures, and volumes are reported for each delineated data range.

On the AquariusNET thin-client software, the AQPlaque toolkit extends the analysis to production of a histogram of voxel values along the defined section of vessel, raising the possibility for a researcher to identify voxel population peaks corresponding to healthy wall and lumen, and to observe potential shift and broadening of these peaks in the presence of disease. Luminal area and vessel cross-sectional dimensions can be reported for comparison with angiography and intra-vascular ultrasound.