Systems and methods of characterizing high risk plaques

A system for risk assessment of coronary plaque tissue data and perivascular tissue data using image data gathered from one or more computed tomography (CT) scans along a blood vessel, the image data including density values of coronary plaque and perivascular tissue, the system comprising:

• a first non-transitory computer storage medium configured to store a database of coronary plaque information of other people, the coronary plaque information including metrics generated from density values of coronary plaque and density values of perivascular tissue;
• a second non-transitory computer storage medium configured to store image information including image data of computed tomography (CT) scans along a blood vessel of a subject, the image data having density values of coronary plaque and density values of perivascular tissue;
• a third non-transitory computer storage medium configured to at least store computer-executable instructions;
• and
• one or more computer hardware processors in communication with the second non-transitory computer storage medium, the one or more computer hardware processors configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to:
• generate the image information and store the image information on the second non-transitory computer storage medium, wherein generating the image information comprises:
• accessing CT scan parameters stored for the subject in a database, the CT scan parameters comprising:
• one or more of a CT scanner type, CT scanner tube amperage, or CT scanner peak tube voltage of the CT scanner used to generate the CT scans;
• one or more of the CT scanner noise, CT scanner signal-to-noise ratio, or CT scanner contrast-to-noise ratio of the CT scanner used to generate the CT scans;
• and
• one or more of contrast type used in the subject for the CT scans or an injection rate of contrast into the subject;
• and
• automatically determining density values of coronary plaque and density values of perivascular tissue in the image data;
• determine, based on applying a machine learning algorithm to the image information, coronary plaque information of the subject, wherein determining the coronary plaque information comprises:
• quantifying, using the image information, density values in a region of coronary plaque of the subject;
• quantifying, using the image information, density values in a region of perivascular tissue;
• and
• generating metrics using the quantified radiodensity values in the region of coronary plaque and the quantified radiodensity values in the region of perivascular tissue;
• and
• generate a risk assessment of the coronary plaque information of the subject by comparing the generated metrics of the subject to the metrics of the coronary plaque information of other people in the database.