Assessing atherosclerosis severity is essential for precise patient stratification. Specifically, there is a need to identify patients with residual inflammation because these patients remain at high risk of cardiovascular events despite optimal management of cardiovascular risk factors. Molecular imaging techniques, such as PET, can have an essential role in this context. PET imaging can indicate tissue-based disease status, detect early molecular changes and provide whole-body information. Advances in molecular biology and bioinformatics continue to help to decipher the complex pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and inform the development of imaging tracers. Concomitant advances in tracer synthesis methods and PET imaging technology provide future possibilities for atherosclerosis imaging. In this Review, we summarize the latest developments in PET imaging techniques and technologies for assessment of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and discuss the relationship between imaging readouts and transcriptomics-based plaque phenotyping.

评估动脉粥样硬化的严重程度对于精确的患者分层至关重要。具体来说，需要识别残留炎症的患者，因为尽管对心血管危险因素进行了最佳管理，但这些患者仍然处于心血管事件的高风险中。分子成像技术（例如 PET）在这方面可以发挥重要作用。 PET 成像可以指示基于组织的疾病状态、检测早期分子变化并提供全身信息。分子生物学和生物信息学的进步继续帮助破译动脉粥样硬化的复杂发病机制，并为成像示踪剂的发展提供信息。示踪剂合成方法和 PET 成像技术的共同进步为动脉粥样硬化成像的未来提供了可能性。在这篇综述中，我们总结了 PET 成像技术和动脉粥样硬化性心血管疾病评估技术的最新进展，并讨论了成像读数与基于转录组学的斑块表型分析之间的关系。