TY  - JOUR
AU  - Stein, Thomas
AU  - Taron, Jana
AU  - Verloh, Niklas
AU  - Doppler, Michael
AU  - Rau, Alexander
AU  - Hagar, Muhammad Taha
AU  - Faby, Sebastian
AU  - Baltas, Dimos
AU  - Westermann, Dirk
AU  - Ayx, Isabelle
AU  - Schönberg, Stefan O
AU  - Nikolaou, Konstantin
AU  - Schlett, Christopher L
AU  - Bamberg, Fabian
AU  - Weiss, Jakob
TI  - Photon-counting computed tomography of coronary and peripheral artery stents: a phantom study.
JO  - Scientific reports
VL  - 13
IS  - 1
SN  - 2045-2322
CY  - [London]
PB  - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature
M1  - DKFZ-2023-01856
SP  - 14806
PY  - 2023
AB  - Accurate small vessel stent visualization using CT remains challenging. Photon-counting CT (PCD-CT) may help to overcome this issue. We systematically investigate PCD-CT impact on small vessel stent assessment compared to energy-integrating-CT (EID). 12 water-contrast agent filled stents (3.0-8 mm) were scanned with patient-equivalent phantom using clinical PCD-CT and EID-CT. Images were reconstructed using dedicated vascular kernels. Subjective image quality was evaluated by 5 radiologists independently (5-point Likert-scale; 5 = excellent). Objective image quality was evaluated by calculating multi-row intensity profiles including edge rise slope (ERS) and coefficient-of-variation (CV). Highest overall reading scores were found for PCD-CT-Bv56 (3.6[3.3-4.3]). In pairwise comparison, differences were significant for PCD-CT-Bv56 vs. EID-CT-Bv40 (p ≤ 0.04), for sharpness and blooming respectively (all p < 0.05). Highest diagnostic confidence was found for PCD-CT-Bv56 (p ≤ 0.2). ANOVA revealed a significant effect of kernel strength on ERS (p < 0.001). CV decreased with stronger PCD-CT kernels, reaching its lowest in PCD-CT-Bv56 and highest in EID-CT reconstruction (p ≤ 0.05). We are the first study to verify, by phantom setup adapted to real patient settings, PCD-CT with a sharp vascular kernel provides the most favorable image quality for small vessel stent imaging. PCD-CT may reduce the number of invasive coronary angiograms, however, more studies needed to apply our results in clinical practice.
KW  - Humans
KW  - Tomography, X-Ray Computed
KW  - Phantoms, Imaging
KW  - Coronary Angiography
KW  - Stents
KW  - Arteries
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:37684412
C2  - pmc:PMC10491813
DO  - DOI:10.1038/s41598-023-41854-3
UR  - https://inrepo02.dkfz.de/record/282730
ER  -