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Purpose: To investigate the diagnostic confidence of Coronary Computed Tomography Angiography (CCTA) and the effect of patient-related factors on CCTA image quality using a second-generation 320-slice scanner.
Methods And Results: 200 consecutive patients (mean age 60±12years; 109 men) prospectively underwent CCTA. The mean body mass index (BMI) was 27.1±4.9kg/m(2); the median heart rate (HR) was 60.0 (interquartile range (IQR), 53.9-66.1) beats per minute (bpm). The median segment's diameter was 2.8 (IQR, 2.2-3.4) mm. For each coronary segment ≥1.5mm in diameter, two readers scored: diameter narrowing as < or ≥50%, overall diagnostic confidence and motion-related image quality, with interobserver agreement kappa-values of 0.89, 0.91 and 0.61 respectively. Seventy-nine of the 2505 evaluated segments (3.2%) had non-diagnostic image quality because of coronary calcifications (66/79; 83.5%), stent- (6/79; 7.5%), pacemaker- (2/79; 2.5%) or motion-related artifacts (5/79; 6.5%). The effect of patient-related factors on motion-related image quality was investigated by multinomial logistic regression in 181 patients with calcium score (IQR, 0-446.5). Increasing coronary diameter was the most improving image quality factor (odds ratio (OR), 1.8637; p<0.001), marginally followed by lower HR (OR, 0.9547; p<0.001) and calcium score (OR, 0.9997; p=0.04). Gender (p=0.70), age (p=0.24) and BMI (p=0.45) did not affect image quality.
Conclusion: Using a second-generation 320-slice scanner, CCTA diagnostic confidence is predominantly affected by coronary calcifications, whereas motion-related image quality is non-diagnostic only in exceptional cases and mainly influenced by the coronary diameter. For future developments, our study findings therefore suggest greater requirements concerning spatial resolution and calcium-related artifact removal than concerning temporal resolution, especially to improve diagnostic confidence in patient groups with smaller coronary diameters.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2016.07.141 | DOI Listing |
Circ Arrhythm Electrophysiol
September 2025
Department of Congenital Heart Disease, Evelina London Children's Hospital, United Kingdom (S. Chivers, T.V., V.Z., S.M., G.M., W.R., E.R., D.F.A.L., T.G.D., O.I.M., G.K.S., J.M.S.).
Background: Fetal tachycardias can cause adverse fetal outcomes including ventricular dysfunction, hydrops, and fetal demise. Postnatally, ECG is the gold standard, but, in fetal practice, echocardiography is used most frequently to diagnose and monitor fetal arrhythmias. Noninvasive extraction of the fetal ECG (fECG) may provide additional information about the electrophysiological mechanism and monitoring of intermittent arrhythmias.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Sens
September 2025
Institute of Applied Mechanics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan.
In recent AI-driven disease diagnosis, the success of models has depended mainly on extensive data sets and advanced algorithms. However, creating traditional data sets for rare or emerging diseases presents significant challenges. To address this issue, this study introduces a direct-self-attention Wasserstein generative adversarial network (DSAWGAN) designed to improve diagnostic capabilities in infectious diseases with limited data availability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMagn Reson Med
September 2025
Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB Division, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Purpose: To develop a deep learning-based reconstruction method for highly accelerated 3D time-of-flight MRA (TOF-MRA) that achieves high-quality reconstruction with robust generalization using extremely limited acquired raw data, addressing the challenge of time-consuming acquisition of high-resolution, whole-head angiograms.
Methods: A novel few-shot learning-based reconstruction framework is proposed, featuring a 3D variational network specifically designed for 3D TOF-MRA that is pre-trained on simulated complex-valued, multi-coil raw k-space datasets synthesized from diverse open-source magnitude images and fine-tuned using only two single-slab experimentally acquired datasets. The proposed approach was evaluated against existing methods on acquired retrospectively undersampled in vivo k-space data from five healthy volunteers and on prospectively undersampled data from two additional subjects.
MAGMA
September 2025
Department of Medical Imaging, (766), Radboud University Medical Center, Geert Grooteplein 10Radboudumc, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Objective: To improve B field homogeneity in prostate MR imaging and spectroscopy using a custom-designed 16-channel external local shim coil array.
Methods: In vivo prostate imaging was performed in seven healthy volunteers (mean age: 40.7 years) without bowel preparation.
J Cancer Res Clin Oncol
September 2025
Department of Radiology, Guizhou Provincial People's Hospital, No. 83 East Zhongshan Road, Guiyang, 550002, Guizhou, China.
Purpose: Targeted therapy with lenvatinib is a preferred option for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, however, predicting its efficacy remains challenging. This study aimed to build a nomogram integrating clinicoradiological indicators and radiomics features to predict the response to lenvatinib in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.
Methods: This study included 211 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma from two centers, who were allocated into the training (107 patients), internal test (46 patients) and external test set(58 patients).