Abstract
PurposeAs Doppler ultrasound has been proven to be an effective tool to predict and compress the optimal pulsing windows, we evaluated the effective dose and diagnostic accuracy of coronary CT angiography (CTA) incorporating Doppler-guided prospective electrocardiograph (ECG) gating, which presets pulsing windows according to Doppler analysis, in patients with a heart rate >65 bpm.Materials and Methods119 patients with a heart rate >65 bpm who were scheduled for invasive coronary angiography were prospectively studied, and patients were randomly divided into traditional prospective (n = 61) and Doppler-guided prospective (n = 58) ECG gating groups. The exposure window of traditional prospective ECG gating was set at 30%–80% of the cardiac cycle. For the Doppler group, the length of diastasis was analyzed by Doppler. For lengths greater than 90 ms, the pulsing window was preset during diastole (during 60%–80%); otherwise, the optimal pulsing intervals were moved from diastole to systole (during 30%–50%).ResultsThe mean heart rates of the traditional ECG and the Doppler-guided group during CT scanning were 75.0±7.7 bpm (range, 66–96 bpm) and 76.5±5.4 bpm (range: 66–105 bpm), respectively. The results indicated that whereas the image quality showed no significant difference between the traditional and Doppler groups (P = 0.42), the radiation dose of the Doppler group was significantly lower than that of the traditional group (5.2±3.4mSv vs. 9.3±4.5mSv, P<0.001). The sensitivities of CTA applying traditional and Doppler-guided prospective ECG gating to diagnose stenosis on a segment level were 95.5% and 94.3%, respectively; specificities 98.0% and 97.1%, respectively; positive predictive values 90.7% and 88.2%, respectively; negative predictive values 99.0% and 98.7%, respectively. There was no statistical difference in concordance between the traditional and Doppler groups (P = 0.22).ConclusionDoppler-guided prospective ECG gating represents an improved method in patients with a high heart rate to reduce effective radiation doses, while maintaining high diagnostic accuracy.
Highlights
With the clinical application of multi-detector CT scanning for imaging the coronary arteries, coronary CT angiography (CTA) has emerged as an attractive noninvasive diagnostic modality for detecting coronary artery disease [1]
The results indicated that whereas the image quality showed no significant difference between the traditional and Doppler groups (P = 0.42), the radiation dose of the Doppler group was significantly lower than that of the traditional group (5.263.4mSv vs. 9.364.5mSv, P,0.001)
Doppler-guided prospective ECG gating represents an improved method in patients with a high heart rate to reduce effective radiation doses, while maintaining high diagnostic accuracy
Summary
With the clinical application of multi-detector CT scanning for imaging the coronary arteries, coronary CT angiography (CTA) has emerged as an attractive noninvasive diagnostic modality for detecting coronary artery disease [1]. Many methods have been developed and applied to reduce the radiation dose, among which prospective electrocardiograph (ECG) gating is one effective method that has demonstrated the obvious advantage of allowing for a decreased patient dose [4,5,6,7,8] It is only effective when the heart rate is low [9]. It is difficult to produce an optimal image quality exclusively at diastole, as some patients should be scanned during systole [10,11,12,13,14,15] In this case, the pulsing windows are usually expanded to cover both systole and diastole, which results in a higher radiation dose (1, 17, 18)
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