This concise review discusses the usefulness of atherosclerosis imaging as the benchmarking tool to evaluate whether morbidity and mortality studies should be conducted when developing new therapeutic strategies. The authors conclude that arterial imaging may indeed provide some insights on the efficacy or failure of new therapeutic approaches to fight atherosclerosis. They also single out cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as probably the most promising imaging technique. For instance, cardiovascular MRI can provide images of plaque composition and may therefore offer some information on plaque vulnerability. Furthermore, cardiovascular MRI would allow younger individuals, including children, to be studied so that we can better understand the long-term relationship between well established and new cardiovascular disease risk factors in early development of atherosclerosis. Cardiovascular imaging would also allow us to study (non-invasively and at a very young age) whether modifying children’s lifestyle habits could slow the progression of atherosclerosis, given that this phenomenon appears early among children and teenagers with poor lifestyle habits.
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