Short Bio
The research project of Dr. Panetta (Evaluation of radiomic features of carotid atherosclerotic plaques from CT angiography and integration with post-endarterectomy micro-CT imaging.) aims to improve risk stratification in patients suffering from carotid atherosclerosis, by means of radiomic analysis of Angio-CT images. Radiomics analysis (RA) is a new approach to quantitative analysis of medical images, which exploits recent artificial intelligence techniques to identify particular details in images (e.g., shapes and textures) with high prognostic value. RA was first introduced in oncology (Lambin P et al, Eur J Cancer. 2012 Mar; 48 (4): 441–446) but is still little explored in the field of cardiovascular imaging (Kolossvary M et al, Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. 2017 Dec; 10 (12): e006843). Another innovative aspect of the research project consists in the integration of AngioTC data with ex-vivo micro-CT images at very high resolution of the plaques, in a cohort of patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy (CEA). Dr. Panetta carries out his research activity at the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the CNR in Pisa.