Matthew J. Budoff and Jerold S. Shinbane Editors

2006

Diagnosis of Cardiovascular Disease

Since its introduction in the early 1970s, computed tomography (CT) has become a robust modality to evaluate extracranial, thoracic, and abdominal vascular distributions. It has become a gold standard to non-invasively image the aorta, pulmonary arteries, great vessels, renal and peripheral arteries. However, cardiac anatomy evaluation with this modality was not possible, due to rapid cardiac motion and slow image acquisition times.