The philosophy of this NATO Advanced Research Workshop and the monograph it has yielded is that if you put a small number of very talented and creative scientists of different backgrounds and documented accomplishments together in a cloistered place for a few days to consider a very important and timely topic, many new ideas will be generated. The keynote of this conference was the Future. By this we mean the expected future developments of highly reliable sequential quantitative measurements of atherosclerotic plaque size and components in living human subjects. Some of the best minds and the most experienced and talented individuals at the leading edges of imaging of arteries were involved; some of the best scientists and students of the atherosclerotic plaque and its components participated; and some of the leading investigators of the cell biology or, as we call it in the USA, the pathobiology of atherosclerosis, contributed important new information. All of these individuals were actively involved in the conference and each obviously had carefully prepared and was able to communicate effectively.