With the advent of multislice CT more than a decade ago, multislice CT angiography has demonstrated a huge potential in the less invasive imaging of cardiovascular disease, especially in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. The diagnostic accuracy of multislice CT angiography has been significantly augmented with the rapid technical developments ranging from the initial 4-slice, to the cur...

UNLABELLED In dual-modality PET/CT systems, the CT scan provides the attenuation map for PET attenuation correction. The current clinical practice of obtaining a single helical CT scan provides only a snapshot of the respiratory cycle, whereas PET occurs over multiple respiratory cycles. Misalignment of the attenuation map and emission image because of respiratory motion causes errors in the at...

BACKGROUND Traumatic hemopericardium remains a rare entity; it does however commonly cause cardiac tamponade which remains a major cause of death in traumatic blunt cardiac injury. OBJECTIVES We present a case of blunt chest trauma complicated by cardiac tamponade causing cardiac chamber equalization revealed by reflux of contrast. CASE REPORT A 29-year-old unidentified male suffered blunt ...

BACKGROUND This is the first study that has examined non-cardiac incidental findings in research cardiac computed tomography (CT) of hemodialysis patients and their relationship with patient characteristics. METHODS We performed a cross-sectional analysis in the Predictors of Arrhythmic and Cardiovascular Events in End-Stage Renal Disease (PACE) study, a prospective cohort study on incident h...

BACKGROUND Aggressive dose reduction strategies for cardiac CT require the prospective selection of limited cardiac phases. At lower heart rates, the period of mid-diastole is typically selected for image acquisition. We aimed to identify the effect of heart rate on the optimal CT acquisition phase within the period of mid-diastole. METHODS We utilized high temporal resolution tissue Doppler ...

Hybrid PET/CT scanners can simultaneously visualize coronary artery disease as revealed by computed tomography (CT) and myocardial perfusion as measured by positron emission tomography (PET). Manual registration is usually required in clinical practice to compensate spatial mismatch between datasets. In this paper, we present a registration algorithm that is able to automatically align PET/CT c...

OBJECTIVES This study sought to determine updated conversion factors (k-factors) that would enable accurate estimation of radiation effective dose (ED) for coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) and calcium scoring performed on 12 contemporary scanner models and current clinical cardiac protocols and to compare these methods to the standard chest k-factor of 0.014 mSv·mGy-1cm-1. BACKG...

With the introduction of 64- or more-slice computed tomography (CT) technology, multislice CT angiography has been increasingly used as a non-invasive modality for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Despite its potential advantages and promising clinical results, multislice CT angiography suffers from high radiation dose which contributes to radiation-induced malignancy in patients under...

BACKGROUND Cardiac transplantation (CT) causes total cardiac denervation. METHODS AND RESULTS To test directly for sympathetic reinnervation in humans, we measured the cardiac release of norepinephrine (NE) in response to tyramine (an agent that causes NE release from intact sympathetic nerve terminals) and sustained handgrip exercise (a reflex sympathetic stimulus) in 12 patients less than 5...