title: Multidetector-row CT of the heart.
abstract: Despite worldwide efforts aimed at primary and secondary prevention, heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the western world. There is great interest in developing tools for noninvasive assessment of the presence and degree of coronary artery disease. The advent of multidetector-row CT allows high-resolution volume coverage of the entire thorax and motion-free imaging of the heart and adjacent vessels within one breathhold. An exciting application with significant potential for cardiac risk stratification, which may overcome the obvious limitations of coronary calcium imaging in the future, is the use of the cross-sectional nature of contrast-enhanced multidetector-row CT coronary angiography for assessment of total coronary artery plaque burden.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA. schoepf@bwh.harvard.edu
authors.forename: U Joseph
authors.initials: UJ
authors.lastname: Schoepf
authors.forename: Christoph R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.forename: Lars K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Hofmann
authors.forename: E Kent
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Yucel
mesh_terms: D000792:Angiography; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D004562:Electrocardiography; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D013902:Radiography, Thoracic; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*