Multienergy Cardiovascular CT Imaging: Current State and Future.

Multienergy cardiovascular computed tomography (CT) imaging can be defined as data acquisition at two (dual-energy) or multiple x-ray energies. Multienergy cardiovascular CT imaging provides additional qualitative and quantitative information such as material maps or virtual monoenergetic images, which are supposed to further improve the quality and diagnostic yield of CT. Recently introduced photon-counting detector CT scanners further address some of the challenges and limitations of previous, conventional CT machines, hereby enhancing and extending the applications of CT for cardiovascular imaging.

Pre-interventional renal artery calcification and survival after transcatheter aortic valve implantation.

The prognostic significance of renal artery calcification (RAC) is unknown in patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) eligible for transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). RAC can be assessed by computed tomography (CT) performed during pre-interventional planning for TAVI. This study aimed at investigating the utility of RAC for predicting survival after TAVI.

Ultra-high resolution CT angiography for the assessment of intracranial stents and flow diverters using photon counting detector CT.

Background: The patency of intracranial stents may not be reliably assessed with either CT angiography or MR angiography due to imaging artifacts. We investigated the potential of ultra-high resolution CT angiography using a photon counting detector (PCD) CT to address this limitation by optimizing scanning and reconstruction parameters.

Methods: A phantom with different flow diverters was used to optimize PCD-CT reconstruction parameters, followed by imaging of 14 patients with intracranial stents using PCD-CT.

The pericoronary adipose tissue attenuation in CT strongly depends on kernels and iterative reconstructions.

Objectives: To investigate the influence of kernels and iterative reconstructions on pericoronary adipose tissue (PCAT) attenuation in coronary CT angiography (CCTA).

Materials And Methods: Twenty otherwise healthy subjects (16 females; median age 52 years) with atypical chest pain, low risk of coronary artery disease (CAD), and without CAD in photon-counting detector CCTA were included. Images were reconstructed with a quantitative smooth (Qr36) and three vascular kernels of increasing sharpness levels (Bv36, Bv44, Bv56).