Arterial Wall Thermography

An atherosclerotic plaque is considered vulnerable when it is at higher risk of inducing acute cardiac events. The early detection and follow‐up of the vulnerable plaque are crucial to prevent these events from happening. To date there are no proven techniques to detect such a plaque. Arterial wall thermography, tracing the heat signature of the activated macrophages, is a new and promising method in this direction. However, the difficulties of applying such a method in vivo should not be neglected. Current science proposes several potential thermographic methods. They can be generally categorized as noninvasive and invasive. Magnetic resonance thermometry (MRT) is the most important noninvasive method. It is novel, accurate, and reproducible, but is unfortunately hampered by resolution limitations due to the size and motion of the target vessels. The “infrared” and the “contact‐sensor” are the most important invasive thermographic methods. Mainly due to the difficulties of infrared radiation in penetrating the flowing blood, the contact thermographic methods seem to be the most feasible at present. The superiority of thermal mapping of the arterial wall versus the localized tempe