CT Angiography in the Evaluation of Cerebrovascular Diseases

Abstract

Sanelli PC, Mifsud MJ, Zelenko N, Heier LA T angiography can provide rapid, minimally invasive evaluation of a broad spectrum of cerebrovascular disorders. Over the past several years, CT angiography has been used more often as an initial neurovascular imaging technique because of its rapid acquisition, widespread availability, and low risks to patients. Recently, the clinical indications of CT angiography have been growing to include a vast array of diseases with the role of CT angiography constantly changing to adjust to the present clinical needs. Noted disadvantages of CT angiography include the use of iodinated contrast material in patients with known allergies and renal disease, failure in timing the scans to achieve optimal opacification of the vessels, time needed to generate postprocessing model, and the potential for distortion during image reconstruction. Because the many technical advantages of CT angiography already have been described in the literature [1–3], we focus on the diagnostic advantages CT angiography offers in the evaluation of cerebrovascular diseases. At our institution, CT angiography is performed on a 4-MDCT scanner (LightSpeed, GE Healthcare) with 1.25-mm helically acquired sections for the head using the highquality mode (table feed, 3.75 mm; 140 kVp; 170 mA) and 2.5-mm sections for the neck using the high-speed mode (table feed, 15 mm; 150 kVp; 190–240 mA). A total of