Background. Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is used for the evaluation of the presence of left atrial appendage (LAA) thrombus prior to pulmonary vein isolation (PVI), while coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is used for anatomic mapping during PVI. Methods. We compared the diagnostic performance of single phase CCTA to TEE in excluding the presence of LAA thrombus in patien...

The detection of stenotic plaques strongly depends on the quality of the coronary arterial tree imaged with coronary CT angiography (cCTA). However, it is time consuming for the radiologist to select the best-quality vessels from the multiple-phase cCTA for interpretation in clinical practice. We are developing an automated method for selection of the best-quality vessels from coronary arterial...

AIM To evaluate how coronary computed tomography-angiography (CCTA) altered the management and treatment of patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). METHODS During 2009, we studied 792 consecutive patients with suspected CAD. CCTA was performed in all patients using a 64-slice dual-source CT scanner and standard scanning protocols. RESULTS After CCTA, obstructive CAD was exclu...

Background: Estimation of functional relevance of a coronary stenosis by fractional flow reserve (FFR) from coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) has recently provided encouraging results. Due to its limited availability, the corrected contrast opacification (CCO) decrease and the transluminal attenuation gradient (TAG) were suggested as less complex alternatives. The aim of the prese...

BACKGROUND Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is helpful in making a precise noninvasive evaluation of coronary anatomy, allowing concomitant evaluation of other cardiac structures. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of coronary artery variations detected by 64-slice multi detector CT. MATERIALS AND METHODS The results of ECG-gated CCTA in 726 consecutive patie...

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is increasingly used for the assessment of coronary heart disease (CHD) in symptomatic patients. Software applications have recently been developed to facilitate efficient and accurate analysis of CCTA. This study aims to evaluate the clinical application of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) software for the detection of significant coronary stenosis...

Recent development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning system has a potential to improve the clinical diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) provides important information of coronary arteries: i.e., stenosis severity, lesion length, plaque attenuation, and degree of calcium deposition. However, the comprehensive analysis of these ...

Direct noninvasive assessment of the characteristics of coronary atherosclerotic plaques is important to improve cardiovascular risk stratification and to monitor the course of coronary artery disease. Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) has become an effective tool for noninvasive evaluation of coronary artery calcium and plaque components. Using CCTA, atherosclerotic plaques can b...

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) has been showed to have high specificity and sensitivity for detecting coronary artery disease (CAD). In Malaysia, national guidelines state that CCTA may be used in low- intermediate pre-test probability (LI-PTP) of CAD, who an equivocal functional test result, are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic with good exercise capacity. Recent evidence su...

Background: Although coronary calcium assessment has been demonstrated to be strongly associated with significant coronary artery disease (CAD) and future cardiac events, it is still not clear whether zero calcium on CT scan can exclude significant CAD and eliminate the need for further multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) coronary angiography (CCTA). The purpose of this study is to test t...