Table 1.

Abbreviations and PICOTS criteria definition

Abbreviations	PICOTS criteria
ACS, acute coronary syndrome	P = Population refers to the sample of subjects you wish to recruit for your study. There may be a fine balance between defining a sample that is most likely to respond to your intervention (e.g. no co-morbidity) and one that can be generalized to patients that are likely to be seen in actual practice
AMI, acute myocardial infarction
AUC, area under the curve
CAD, coronary artery disease
CCS, coronary calcium scoring
CCTA, coronary computed tomography angiography
CFR, coronary flow reserve
CI, confidence interval
FAI, fat attenuation index
FFR, fractional flow reserve
HU, Hounsfield unit
HR, hazard ratio	I = Intervention refers to the treatment that will be provided to subjects enrolled in your study
LAD, left anterior descending artery
LCx, left circumflex artery
MACEs, major adverse cardiovascular events	C = Comparison identifies what you plan on using as a reference group to compare with your treatment intervention. Many study designs refer to this as the control group. If an existing treatment is considered the ‘gold standard’, then this should be the comparison group
MI, myocardial infarction
MINOCAs, myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary arteries
NOS, Newcastle–Ottawa Scale
NCP, non-calcified plaque
PET, positron emission tomography
PVAT, perivascular adipose tissue	O = Outcome represents what result you plan on measuring to examine the effectiveness of your intervention. There are, typically, a multitude of outcome tools available for different clinical populations, each having strengths and weaknesses
RCA, right coronary artery
18F-NaF, 18F-sodium fluoride
	T = Time describes the duration for your data collection