Multicenter epidemiological studies of atherosclerosis imaging.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading course of death and disability. Conventional cardiac risk factors do not fully explain the level of cardiovascular risk, incidence of coronary artery disease, and coronary events. Risk stratification and therapy based solely on these conventional risk factors may overlook a population who would benefit from lifestyle and risk factor modification. Thus, research has recently focused on improving risk assessment with new tools in an effort to better identify subjects at highest risk and in need of aggressive management. Cardiovascular imaging, both in coronary and extracoronary arterial beds, has proven to be very helpful in this regard. In this article, we review the current literature from multicenter epidemiology studies on the utility of noninvasive imaging modalities for risk stratification in the context of conventional risk factor evaluation.