This ultrasound technique identified carotid plaques in 78% of cases. Carotid plaque burden was found to correlate stronger with CACS (chi-square 450, p < 0.0001) than did cIMT (chi-square 24, p < 0.0001)15. Analyses have indicated that subclinical atherosclerosis as determined by 3D ultrasound is an important risk factor with marked incremental value over conventional risk-factor based scores such as the Framingham Risk Score.