February 2017 – Aortic Surveillance

Cross-Section:

VR Movie:

70 year-old male has an aortic dissection that begins in the Ascending Aorta and extends along the Aorta involving multiple abdominal and pelvic arteries along the course. The video with black/white image shows what is called a cross-section of the aorta from the heart, through the aorta, all the way to the pelvic vessels. A normal aorta will have a single-bordered, round/elliptical appearance (Figure A). This particular aorta has multiple borders (darkness in the round shape) showing a detached inner layer of the aorta (intima).

The 3DQ Lab at Stanford specializes at visualizing and quantifying patients with this condition. To do this, we standardized measurement locations and provide precise measurements at these landmarks for each aorta of interest; these landmarks are shown in Figure B. We currently track over 1,500 patients with Aorta issues such as dissection. Our standardized analysis approach provides a succinct graph plotting historic aorta measurements for each patient (Figure C).

For more information about dissections, please visit: http://www.iradonline.org/about.html