Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Cardiovascular disease remains the number one killer in developed countries. Acute coronary syndromes and/or sudden cardiac death are both caused by the rupture of a vulnerable coronary atherosclerotic plaque. In addition, stroke appears to be the third cause of death and the leading cause of morbidity. More than 60% of all cerebral infarctions are caused by the rupture of a vulnerable plaque. In this context, we are proposing a French / Canadian pluridisciplinary consortium (MELANII) to develop new ultrasound (US) based imaging tools to assess the mechanical stability of vulnerable coronary and carotid artery walls, respectively. This research is timely since it is now established that mechanical stress affects several cellular processes at the origin of an often fatal thrombotic event, including macrophage migration within the plaque, vessel wall remodelling and modulation of plaque angiogenesis, which are central to the plaque's vulnerability status. Canadian scientists involved in this grant application developed and patented robust elastography approaches (EVE and NIVE) to estimate, with US, deformations within the vascular wall. Concomitantly, French partners designed and patented a complementary imaging modulography tool (iMOD) to go one step further by highlighting the elasticity of all plaque constituents (modulogram). Such a combined expertise in vascular elastography and modulography cannot be found in either France or Canada. The main objectives of this 3-year MELANII France/Canada grant (programme BLANC international) are: 1) to design a novel semi-automatic ""elastography /modulography/morphology"" tool combining the performances of the French's iMOD algorithm and Canadian's EVE and NIVE methods; 2) to validate this novel tool, a) in vitro on polyvinyl alcohol cryogel (PVA) vascular phantoms, b) in vivo on coronaries and carotids in an atherosclerotic pig model, and finally c) in vivo on coronaries and carotids of patients on statin drug therapy; and 3) to transfer our technology to our commercial partners (ORS in Montreal, Canada and ANSYS in Villeurbanne, France).