Lead author Elizabeth Brown of the University of Washington in Seattle said that calcium coverage scoring takes into account not only the amount of calcified plaque build-up in the coronary arteries, but also its distribution.

"Currently, physicians only see the result in terms of an overall score designed to measure the amount of calcified plaque," Brown said in a statement."This new approach will provide physicians with a measure of the proportion of the arteries affected."

The prospective study included 6,814 men and women between the ages of 45 and 84. The researchers compared CT image data for 3,252 participants with calcific plaque to data collected from 3,416 patients without calcific plaque. A calcium coverage score was developed to estimate the percentage of coronary arteries affected by plaque.The patients were tracked for a median period of 41 months.

The study, published in the June issue of the journal Radiology, showed that diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia, or abnormal concentrations of lipids or lipoproteins in the blood, were highly associated with calcium coverage score.