Coronary CT: a retrospective analysis between ECG-gated prospective adaptive sequential acquisition and high pitch spiral acquisition on dual source system.

Abstract

Cardiac CT has a key importance in coronary stenosis and anomalies diagnosis, with a high predictive value and a minor or nulled grade of invasivity. Thanks to the new technological advances, development of dual-source systems and new iterative algorithms, it has been possible to dramatically reduce doses with a good compromise on image quality, allowing not only diagnostic results in the morphological evaluation, but also in the dynamical analysis. The well-known dichotomy between prospective and retrospective triggering, even in their technical evolution, is nowadays facing new techniques, like the relatively new  "high pitch mode" and even more complex iterative reconstructions that allow diagnostic results with important dose savings, finally enabling to have a diagnostic scan with an effective dose even less than 1 mSv. In this article, we’ll analyze the performance of a dual-source systems in diagnostics, with quantitative analysis of radiogenic doses between the prospective adaptive step and shoot technique and the prospective high-pitch helical acquisition, known as "Flash mode".