15289-s-bos

2 21 | Validation CHS and PiU Introduction Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the main causes of death worldwide(1). CVD risk can be identified with imaging techniques, like ultrasonography, by detecting subclinical atherosclerosis. Ultrasound is the most commonly used imaging modality to assess carotid intima media thickness (C-IMT) and atherosclerotic plaques (2-5). C-IMT can be measured manually, or with automated software. Automated C-IMT measurements have been shown to produce more reliable, reproducible and faster results than manual measurements(6). The Panasonic CardioHealth Station (CHS) is a portable system capable of measuring the C-IMT automatically (figure 1), but has hitherto not been tested against another validated automated C-IMT measurement system, such as the widely used Philips iU-22 (PiU) ultrasound system(7). We therefore compared the performances of these systems to evaluate whether the CHS produces reliable and reproducible data in C-IMT measurements and in the detection of carotid plaques. Materials and Methods Study population Seventy dyslipidaemic patients were recruited between March 2014 and March 2015 from the outpatient clinic for cardiovascular genetics at the Erasmus MC. Healthy controls were recruited through advertisements. All subjects were over 18 years old, written informed consent was obtained, and the study was approved by the local ethical committee (MEC-2012-309; MEC-2013-556). All subjects underwent carotid ultrasound imaging twice, on either the CHS (intra- observer variability and inter-observer variability), or on both systems (inter-system variability). Measurements were performed by two experienced observers (Observer X and Observer Y). Equipment: The CHS (Panasonic, Yokohama, Japan) is a portable system capable of automated C-IMT measurements. The CHS is equipped with a broadband 9 MHz linear-array transducer. As a reference, we used the previously validated semi-automated PiU (Philips Medical