Coronary Artery Angiography And Three-Dimensional Reconstruction: A Serial Studies On Electron-Beam Computed Tomography

I Studies of Scan and Reconstruction Methods on Postmortem Pig Heart Coronary Arteries: Electron Beam Computed Tomography AngiographyPurpose To select the perfect imaging and reconstruction methods by scanning the postmortem pig heart coronary arteries on electron beam computed tomography (EBCT). Materials and Methods: There were 35 branches of 20 fresh normal postmortem pig heart coronary arteries (LAD=18,RCA=17) studied by using contrast enhanced single slice mode (SSM) of EBCT. 1.5mm, 2mm(CW 3mm ,Overlap 1mm) and 3mm as slice thickness (collimation width, CW) and different "kernel" , "algorithm" , field of view (FOV) as parameters of reconstruction methods were selected to reconstruct raw image data. The quality of different images were compared to each others. Results: (1) The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of the images which 1.5mm, 2mm and 3mm as slice thickness were 28.0 ± 15.2, 31.8 ± 18.8 and 33.4 ± 15.3. The lengths of visualized coronary arteries lumina were 71.6 ± 14.0mm, 58.4 ± 5.4mm and 59.1 ± 7.9mm, respectively. (2) when different "kernel" and "algorithm" were used, the "smooth-cone beam" images has the highest CNR with 48.2 ± 13.3, the lowest CNR was 14.7 ± 3.4 with "verysharp-normal" images.The "cone beam" images with higher CNR than that of "normal" images as the reconstruction algorithm. (3) when selected 12.7mm, 18mm and 26mm as the reconstructed field of view (FOV), the CNR of the images were 32.5 ± 9.9, 28.5 ± 8.1 and 25.2 ± 8.2, the lengths of visualized coronary lumina were 76.1 ± 12.5mm,...