Arterial plaque comes in two types: soft, lipid-rich plaque that's actively growing and dangerous, and hard calcified plaque that's less risky. The speaker compares soft plaque to volcanic lava that can harden into rock. AI can now measure total plaque and distinguish soft from hard, with soft plaque being the key indicator of heart attack risk.
The dangerous plaque, the active plaque, the growing plaque. We call it soft plaque or lipid-rich plaque. I'm going to call it lava. There's 2 kinds of plaque, basically, and I'm going to use my favorite analogy. The first kind of plaque, the plaque that's always initially deposited, the starting plaque, which is also the dangerous plaque, the active plaque, the growing plaque, okay? We call it soft plaque or lipid-rich plaque. I'm going to call it lava, right? Because I'm going to tell you the volcano analogy. All plaque starts out as lava. Mm-hmm. Right? All volcanoes start out as— even extinct ones start out as lava. Over time, after that gets deposited, that lava will cool down. Yep. And it'll become rock. Solidified. Yeah. Solidified. A cinder cone. An extinct volcano. So what AI also does is it tells me exactly how much plaque you have, then we'll break it down into how much soft plaque you have, the lava, and how much hard plaque. Ah, okay. Okay. I don't care about the hard plaque.
