Effect of electrocardiogram triggering on reproducibility of coronary artery calcium scoring.
OBJECTIVE
To test the hypothesis that computed tomographic (CT) scanning during early rather than middle diastole can significantly reduce the interscan variability of coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores.


METHODS
Five hundred thirty-eight patients were initially enrolled; 282 of them were found to have CAC at electron-beam CT and underwent repeat scanning to measure interscan variability with different electrocardiogram (ECG) triggers. Eight patients were excluded owing to respiratory motion; thus, 274 asymptomatic patients were examined. Patients were randomly assigned to different ECG trigger interval groups: 40% (group 1), 50% (group 2), 60% (group 3), and 80% (group 4). Patients in whom more than one-third of sections had greater than 10% ECG trigger variability were classified in the untriggered group (group 5). Interscan variation was compared among all five groups.


RESULTS
Interscan variabilities in CAC groups 1-5 were 11.5%, 15.3%, 20.3%, 17.4%, and 33.1%, respectively, for total calcium area, and 15.0%, 23.3%, 25.6%, 24.0%, and 42.4%, respectively, for total calcium score. CAC score variability was reduced by 34%; and calcium area variability, by 38% in group 1, as compared with the reduced variabilities in group 4 (P <.01 for both measures). Breath holding was adequate in 812 cases, and ECG triggering was correct in 790 of cases.


CONCLUSIONS
Study results strongly support the use of an ECG trigger of 40% rather than 80% of the R-R interval in electron-beam CT calcium studies.
Mao
S
S
Harbor-UCLA Research and Education Institute, 1124 W Carson St, RB-2, Torrance, CA 90502, USA.
Bakhsheshi
H
H
Lu
B
B
Liu
S C
SC
Oudiz
R J
RJ
Budoff
M J
MJ
D002118:Calcium / Q000032:analysis*; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000737:chemistry*; D004562:Electrocardiography; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
D002118:Calcium