title: Detection of a coronary artery vessel wall: performance of 0.3 mm fine-cell detector computed tomography--a phantom study.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether experimental fine-cell detector computed tomography with a 0.3125 mm cell (0.3 mm cell CT) can improve the detection of coronary vessel walls compared with conventional 64-slice computed tomography with a 0.625 mm cell (0.6 mm cell CT). A coronary vessel wall phantom was scanned using 0.6 mm cell CT and 0.3 mm cell CT. The data for 0.3 mm cell CT were obtained using four protocols: a radiation dose equal, double, triple or quadruple that were used in the 0.6 mm cell CT protocol. The detectable size of the vessel wall was assessed based on the first and second derivative functions, and the minimum measurable values were compared using a paired t-test. As a result, the minimum detectable wall thickness of 0.6 mm cell CT (1.5 mm) was significantly larger than that of 0.3 mm cell CT performed using the triple- and quadruple-dose protocols (0.9 mm) and the double-dose protocol (1.1 mm). The difference in the minimum detectable vessel wall thickness measured using 0.6 mm cell CT (1.5 ± 0.1 mm) and 0.3 mm cell CT (0.9 ± 0.1 mm, 1.1 ± 0.2 mm) was significant (p < 0.01). We concluded that 0.3 mm cell CT improved the detection of coronary vessel walls when a more than double-dose protocol was used compared with 0.6 mm cell CT.
authors.affiliation: Multi-dimension Biomedical Imaging & Information Laboratory in Research Park, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Minoru
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yamada
authors.forename: Masahiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jinzaki
authors.forename: Yutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tanami
authors.forename: Kazuhiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Matsumoto
authors.forename: Akihisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ueno
authors.forename: Masatake
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nukui
authors.forename: Yasuhiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Imai
authors.forename: Yotaro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ishihara
authors.forename: Akihiko
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nishide
authors.forename: Kosuke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sasaki
authors.forename: Sachio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuribayashi
mesh_terms: D017023:Coronary Angiography / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000295:instrumentation*