Elucid has announced the commercial availability of a new lesion inspection tool for coronary and carotid plaque analysis in its novel Plaque-IQ software suite.
The tool provides physicians the ability to interrogate lesion-specific composition and plaque burden across any vessel, which can help the physician better understand the patient risk profile to enhance clinical decision-making, Elucid claims.
“The lesion inspection tool provides a detailed view of plaque composition at the lesion level, beyond giving just overall plaque metrics,” said Jimmy Kerrigan (Ascension Saint Thomas Heart, Nashville, USA). “Because cardiovascular events like heart attacks occur at the lesion level, having the ability to characterise individual lesions enhances my understanding of a patient’s disease process and supports more informed clinical decision-making.”
Plaque-IQ’s lesion inspection tool allows users to interrogate any lesion or region, and access quantitative results displayed for the specific segment. By providing precise quantification of plaque types at the lesion level, the tool enables physicians to quantify high-risk features like lipid-rich necrotic core (LRNC). These objective and actionable data support proactive, individualised treatment strategies.
Plaque-IQ is described by Elucid as the only plaque analysis technology trained and validated against objective ground truth histology, the gold standard for plaque characterisation. Powered by computed tomography-virtual histology (CT-VH), Plaque-IQ non-invasively quantifies and classifies coronary and carotid plaque and its components—including LRNC—offering direct insights into high-risk plaque features associated with heart attack and stroke, measuring true disease rather than directional proxies, according to the company.
By focusing on true disease biology rather than population-based risk estimates, this approach is designed to help physicians prioritise and personalise treatment for each individual patient.
