Cardiovascular CT Protocol for Imaging

Data acquisitions were performed with a 64-detector row CT scanner (Aquilion 64, Toshiba Medical Systems, Tokyo, Japan) or 320-detector row CT scanner (Aquilion One, Toshiba Medical Systems, Tokyo, Japan) according to a previous described protocol [21 (link)]. In short, if the heart rate was higher than 65 beats per minute, oral or intravenous β blockers were administered, if not contra-indicated. In total, 60–110 mL non-ionic contrast material (Iomeron 400, Bracco, Milan, Italy or Ultravist 370, Bayer Schering Pharma AG Berlin, Germany) was administered followed by a saline flush with a flow rate of 5 mL/second. Thereafter, images were reconstructed at the best phase of the R–R interval. The average image size and voxel size of the datasets were 512 × 512 × 512 and 0.307 × 0.307 × 0.25 mm, respectively.