Coronary Atherosclerosis, commonly referenced as Cardiovascular Disease (CVD), is the #1 killer in the world today. In the United States alone, the American Heart Association has estimated that 1 in 3 deaths can be linked to complications due to CVD. Ultimately, the extreme severity of this disease can be attributed to an immense lack of understanding regarding its pathogenesis. As a scientific community, we have made considerable strides in understanding how the disease progresses, yet we remain unsuccessful in our endeavors to definitively determine its true cause.

Previous efforts have focused at looking at factors inside of the blood vessel in order to determine the root cause of the disease. Unfortunately, none of these efforts have been successful. As a result, a new school of thought has emerged that suggests that CVD may be caused by factors external to the blood vessel, particularly in the tissues directly surrounding the blood vessel. However, as of now, no tools have been created that are dedicated to performing this type of analysis. Thus, we aim to develop a tool to aid the analysis of such tissues.