High-definition scanner offers sharper stent images

Dense stent materials and the resulting blooming artifacts on CT inhibit assessment of in-stent lumens. The doses required for stent assessment are high, and reducing the dose increases the blooming artifacts.

"We investigated coronary stent diagnosis performance on high-definition CT and compared it with an ordinary 64-row MDCT using a pulsating cardiac phantom with different heartbeats," using four different stent models, said presenter Yun Shen, an employee of GE Healthcare of Chalfont St. Giles, U.K.

While all stent sizes were underestimated on both scanners, measurements on the standard 64-detector-row CT were all statistically significantly smaller (p < 0.01) than the results from HDCT.

"HDCT with high spatial resolution showed significant improvement in quantitative measurement accuracy of in-stent lumen sizes," Shen told AuntMinnie.com. "This is important to CT coronary stent assessment, and it affects the subsequent management of the patient."