Simultaneous cervical CT angiography from routine contrast-enhanced neck CT with multi-detector CT scanning

84 ● M a r t 2 0 0 1 C omputed tomographic angiography (CTA) is a technique that has evolved in a rapidly changing interplay of hardware and software advances. CT scan times are becoming ever shorter, now allowing imaging of larger segments of arterial anatomy during circulation of the intravenous bolus of contrast material. Multidetector (or multislice) CT is the most recent dramatic advance that has had a formidable impact on the style, quality, and efficiency of CT scanning. The new multidetector scanners, when used with thinner collimations, represent a generational advance in CT scanning technology. The greatest advance of multislice CT is in extending the quality and capacity of CT angiographic studies (1). In this pictorial assay, we demonstrate the results of cervical CT angiography acquired as a byproduct during routine contrast-enhanced neck CT exams with a multi-detector array helical CT scanner in the preoperative evaluation of patients with neck pathologies. We predict that routine cross-sectional imaging protocols with "built in" availability such as CTA raw data may become routinely used in the neck and other parts of the body due to their versatility.