Is FFRCT agame changer in coronary CT angiography?

Abstract

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is already of great importance for the primary diagnostic testing for coronary artery disease (CAD) due to its high negative predictive value (NPV) and high sensitivity but, however, limited specificity. The specificity of invasive coronary angiography (ICA) could be increased by integrating the fractional flow reserve (FFR) into the invasive workflow with proof of the hemodynamic relevance of amorphologically detected coronary stenosis. New noninvasive methods of FFR calculations in CT based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) or machine learning (ML) demonstrate very encouraging results; however, the widespread use of FFRCT is mainly determined by the image quality and the resulting capabilities of coronary artery segmentation, which could be insufficient in up to 7-12% of CCTAs to calculate FFRCT, although amorphological assessment is still possible in most cases. Furthermore, FFRCT cannot be used in total coronary artery occlusion, e.g. to assess the amount of collateral flow. Therefore, FFRCT calculation alone is not the game changer in diagnosing chronic coronary syndrome (CCS), but the additional use of FFRCT together with CCTA can be beneficial in ambiguous cases. Additionally, only one commercially available FFRCT solution exists on the market with an off-site solution, which limits its acute benefits. Several on-site FFRCT solutions for scientific evaluation exist but can so far only be used for scientific purposes and are not available for clinical use; however, the calculation of FFRCT from CCTA data is certainly ameaningful supplement to the purely morphological assessment of the coronary arteries. The value of CCTA for the primary diagnosis of CCS in aclinical scenario will be improved when on-site FFRCT solutions become commercially available.