Background-Current imaging modalities, such as contrast angiography, accurately determine the degree of luminal narrowing but provide no direct information on plaque size. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), however, has potential for noninvasively determining arterial wall area (WA). This study was conducted to determine the accuracy of in vivo MRI for measuring the cross-sectional maximum wall area (MaxWA) of atherosclerotic carotid arteries in a group of patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy. Methods and Results-Fourteen patients scheduled for carotid endarterectomy underwent preoperative carotid MRI using a custom-made phased-array coil. The plaques were excised en bloc and scanned using similar imaging parameters. MaxWA measurements from the ex vivo MRI were used as the reference standard and compared with MaxWA measurements from the corresponding in vivo MR study. Agreement between the in vivo and ex vivo measurement was analyzed using the Bland-Altman method.

Visualization is an integral aspect of genomics data analysis where the output of procedures performed in computing environments like Bioconductor is often visualized. Algorithmic-statistical analysis and interactive visualization are usually disjoint but are most effective when used iteratively. We introduce tools that provide this tight-knit integration: Epiviz (http://epiviz.cbcb.umd.edu), a web-based genome browser, and the Epivizr Bioconductor package allowing interactive, extensible and reproducible visualization within a state-of-the-art data analysis platform.

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