title: CT of thoracic aortic disease.
abstract: The role of CT continuous to expand. However, competing modalities and their value and limitations for the same clinical indication should also be understood. In addition, CT radiation patient dose must be justified in the context of adding diagnostic value. Techniques for quantitative CT and their utility for specific applications are important, and protocols must be tailored to answer the clinical need. Finally, newer post-processing techniques, including surface rendering, maximum intensity projections (MIP), 3-D displays and multimodality image integration can certainly be helpful for diagnosis and usually they improve the referring clinicians' comprehension, however these methods may not necessarily provide additional diagnostic information.
mesh_terms: D001013:Aorta, Thoracic / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D001018:Aortic Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*