Contrast Use in Cardiac CTA Applications; Supplement to Applied Radiology: December 2006.
Fishman EK.
The state of the art of computed tomography (CT) is constantly changing. Today, new technology is being introduced every 12 to 18 months, a pace that is expected to continue, if not accelerate.
Cardiac CT is driving innovation. Although CT is indispensable for the evaluation of the liver, pancreas, lung, and musculoskeletal system, manufacturers are intensely focused on meeting the clinical demands of cardiac imaging. Cardiac CT demands high temporal resolution, high spatial resolution, and true volume data sets. Today, the typical rotation time is approximately 0.33 seconds, slice thickness is submillimeter, and data sets consist not of hundreds of slices, but thousands. Isotropic resolution enables cardiac CT data to be acquired in a single plane but viewed with the same high resolution in any plane.
Some of the future innovations in CT are predictable —faster scanning, for example—but others are not. New concepts constantly develop, from multiple X-ray tubes to new detector displays and arrays. We truly are in an exciting era of technologic achievement in cardiac CT.