Dual-source computed tomographic coronary angiography: image quality and stenosis diagnosis in patients with high heart rates.

We sought to evaluate prospectively the effects of heart rate and heart-rate variability on dual-source computed tomographic coronary image quality in patients whose heart rates were high, and to determine retrospectively the accuracy of dual-source computed tomographic diagnosis of coronary artery stenosis in the same patients.We compared image quality and diagnostic accuracy in 40 patients whose heart rates exceeded 70 beats/min with the same data in 40 patients whose heart rates were 70 beats/min or slower. In both groups, we analyzed 1,133 coronary arterial segments. Five hundred forty-five segments (97.7%) in low-heart-rate patients and 539 segments (93.7%) in high-heart-rate patients were of diagnostic image quality. We considered P < 0.05 to be statistically significant. No statistically significant differences between the groups were found in diagnostic-image quality scores of total segments or of any coronary artery, nor were any significant differences found between the groups in the accurate diagnosis of angiographically significant stenosis.Calcification was the chief factor that affected diagnostic accuracy. In high-heart-rate patients, heart-rate variability was significantly related to the diagnostic image quality of all segments (P = 0.001) and of the left circumflex coronary artery (P = 0.016). Heart-rate variability of more than 5 beats/min most strongly contributed to an inability to evaluate segments in both groups. When heart rates rose, the optimal reconstruction window shifted from diastole to systole.The image quality of dual-source computed tomographic coronary angiography at high heart rates enables sufficient diagnosis of stenosis, although variability of heart rates significantly deteriorates image quality.