Cardiology

PCCT reduced overestimation of coronary artery calcium compared with conventional energy-integrating detector CT (EID-CT), addressing the well-known impact of calcium blooming, partial-volume effects, beam hardening, and motion artifacts on coronary calcium assessment. The study used native coronary arteries from 10…

Learning objectives To provide a basic understanding of CCT technology and use of different scan protocols according to the clinical questions To describe what information can be obtained from a CCT study for a variety cardiac conditions and how this can affect clinical management To know indications for CCT for the…

Cardiac PCCT integrated directly into the acute stroke CT workflow achieved 96% diagnostic accuracy, 90% sensitivity, 97% specificity, and a particularly strong 99% negative predictive value for left atrial appendage (LAA) thrombus compared with TEE. The cardiac acquisition was added immediately after stroke CTA with only…

Photon-counting detector (PCD) coronary CT showed less calcium blooming than conventional energy-integrating detector (EID) CT, resulting in systematically lower visual estimates of coronary luminal stenosis. In 25 patients scanned with both systems on the same day, median visual stenosis decreased from 31.8% to 20.6% for…

Access publication Key takeaways UHR PCCTA significantly improved the assessment of calcified coronary stenoses by reducing calcium blooming artifacts, resulting in more accurate stenosis quantification than standard-resolution CCTA. Compared with standard-resolution imaging, UHR PCCTA reclassified 54.4% of patients to a…

Access publication Key takeaways UHR PCCTA provided significantly more accurate measurements of calcified and partially calcified coronary stenoses than conventional energy-integrating detector (EID) CCTA, while maintaining comparable radiation dose and contrast media volume. The improved spatial resolution of PCCT reduced…

This phantom study demonstrates that ultra-high-resolution (UHR) photon-counting CT (PCCT) substantially improves visualization of low-attenuation plaque (LAP) compared with standard-resolution PCCT and a clinically used energy-integrating detector CT (EID-CT) protocol. The combination of UHR acquisition (120 × 0.2 mm…

Dedicated photon-counting CT protocols enabled up to 40% radiation dose reduction and 33% iodine reduction while maintaining diagnostic image quality for thoracoabdominal aortic CTA. Even the combined low-dose/low-contrast (LD/LC) protocol provided objective and subjective image quality comparable to third-generation…

Ultra-high-resolution (UHR) coronary CTA with photon-counting CT was feasible in patients with a high coronary calcium burden, providing improved visualization of calcified plaques and adjacent coronary lumen compared with conventional 0.6 mm reconstructions. Reconstruction kernel selection proved critical. Moderate sharp…

Ultra-high-resolution (UHR) photon-counting coronary CT angiography demonstrated significantly higher precision than standard-resolution (SR) PCCT for quantifying coronary stenosis, particularly in heavily calcified vessels. Compared with invasive 3D quantitative coronary angiography (QCA), UHR-PCCT reduced median stenosis…

Photon-counting CT reduced radiation dose by 32% compared with energy-integrating detector CT while significantly improving contrast-to-noise ratio across the coronary, pulmonary, and aortic vascular territories. PCCT achieved pulmonary artery contrast-to-noise ratios with 75 mL contrast equivalent to EID-CT using 98.5 mL,…

Photon-counting CT (PCCT) was used to characterize suspected HeartMate 3 (HM3) left ventricular assist device (LVAD) outflow graft stenosis and generate patient-specific computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to determine whether visually apparent stenoses were haemodynamically significant. Despite radiological…

Access publication Key takeaways UHR PCCTA reduced unnecessary downstream testing compared with conventional energy-integrating detector (EID) CCTA, including an 18.9% reduction in functional follow-up tests and a 6.0% reduction in invasive coronary angiography (ICA). Improved diagnostic specificity with PCCT translated…

A tailored PCCT coronary CTA protocol achieved 90% fully diagnostic examinations, significantly outperforming the previous EID-CT protocol (78%), despite imaging an older population with substantially higher coronary calcium burden. Diagnostic image quality remained high even in heavily calcified patients, with 77% of…

The original case report was published at JACC: Case reports Nguyen KV, Nguyen VT, Nguyen NT, et al. Photon-Counting Computed Tomography for In-Stent Occlusion: Lumen Visualization and Myocardial Viability. JACC Case Rep. 2026;108566. doi:10.1016/j.jaccas.2026.108566. [toggle] Authors and Affiliations Authors: Khoi…

Comment: This is not a complete case report Examination Protocol Scanner NAEOTOM Alpha Scan area Heart Scan mode QuantumPlus Scan length 134.52 mm Scan direction Cranio-caudal Scan time 3.6 s Tube voltage 120 kV Effective mAs IQ level 70 Dose modulation CARE Dose4D CTDIvol 28.6 mGy DLP 375 mGy*cm Rotation time 0.25 s Pitch…

Dr. Leena Sulaibeekh, Dr. Mary AI-Teraif, Dr. Rajesh Jayakumar, Dr. Mohammed Ali Zayed, Dr. Chetan Narayana, and Dr. Mohammed Faizal Mohammed Bin Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa Specialist Cardiac Centre (MKCC), Bahrain June 3, 2026 lntroduction Cardiovascular care and imaging requirements have undergone a significant…

A single-session PCCT workflow successfully combined coronary CTA, carotid imaging, lung assessment, and delayed cardiac imaging within one consolidated examination. The protocol integrated UHR coronary PCCTA (0.2 mm) with a high-pitch thoraco-cervical acquisition (0.4 mm), maintaining diagnostic image quality while…

PCCT enabled millimeter-scale, layer-specific quantification of carotid perivascular adipose tissue using concentric 1–5 mm annular segmentation. PVAT attenuation decreased progressively with increasing distance from the carotid wall, with significant differences especially between the 1 mm layer and the 3–5 mm layers.…