submission for Workshop on Solving Computational Challenges in Medical Imaging – July 2007 Targeted Statistical Image Reconstruction for Cardiac CT Imaging Adam Alessio, PhD, [email protected] Department of Radiology University of Washington Purpose: Current computed tomography (CT) systems generate images with analytic tomographic reconstruction methods because they are simple to imple...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Vascular surgery carries high operative risk. Recently developed cardiac computed tomography (CT) provides excellent imaging of coronary artery disease (CAD), as well as myocardial perfusions. We investigated the role of stress perfusion CT with coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) using 128-slice dual source CT (DSCT) in preoperative cardiac risk evaluation...

PURPOSE Ventricular function is a powerful predictor of survival in patients with heart failure (HF). However, studies characterizing gated F-18 FDG PET for the assessment of the cardiac function are rare. The aim of this study was to prospectively compare gated F-18 FDG PET and cardiac MRI for the assessment of ventricular volume and ejection fraction (EF) in patients with HF. METHODS Eighty...

Cardiotrophin-1 (CT-1) is known to promote survival but also to induce an elongated morphology of isolated cardiac myocytes, leading to the hypothesis that CT-1, which is chronically augmented in human heart failure, might induce eccentric cardiac hypertrophy and contractile failure. To address this, we used heart tissues reconstituted from neonatal rat cardiac myocytes (engineered heart tissue...

OBJECTIVE Cardiotrophin-1 (CT-1) is a member of the IL-6 family of cytokines and is expressed in various cardiovascular disease states. CT-1 induces cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, and protects myocytes from ischemia reperfusion injury. We sought to elucidate CT-1 signaling in cardiac fibroblasts with respect to initiation of protein synthesis. METHODS Cardiac fibroblasts were isolated from the ve...

BACKGROUND Cardiac computed tomography (CT) has emerged as an alternative to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for ventricular volumetry. However, the clinical use of cardiac CT requires external validation. METHODS Both cardiac CT and MRI were performed prior to pulmonary valve implantation (PVI) in 11 patients (median age, 19 years) who had undergone total correction of tetralogy of Fallot d...

BACKGROUND Optimal lead positioning is an important determinant of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) response. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate cardiac computed tomography (CT) selection of the optimal epicardial vein for left ventricular (LV) lead placement by targeting regions of late mechanical activation and avoiding myocardial scar. METHODS Eighteen patients un...

AIMS Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and right ventricular ejection fraction (RVEF) are important tools in clinical decision-making. We hypothesized that two-dimensional echocardiography (2DE), three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE), radionucleotide ventriculography (RNV), cardiac computed tomography (CT), gated single-photon emission CT (SPECT), and invasive cardiac cine ventriculo...

Although chest computed tomography (CT) is useful for identifying ascending aortic calcification before surgery, the efficacy of routine preoperative CT in cardiac surgery is unknown. We sought to clarify the role of routine preoperative chest CT for the determination of ascending aortic calcification before cardiac surgery to aid in the prevention of stroke. Three hundred consecutive patients ...