CT of the Heart

Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive and richly-illustrated guide to cardiac CT, its current state, applications, and future directions. While the first edition of this text focused on what was then a novel instrument looking for application, this edition comes at a time where a wealth of guideline-driven, robust, and beneficial clinical applications have evolved that are enabled by an enormous and ever growing field of technology. Accordingly, the focus of the text has shifted from a technology-centric to a more patient-centric appraisal. While the specifications and capabilities of the CT system itself remain front and center as the basis for diagnostic success, much of the benefit derived from cardiac CT today comes from avant-garde technologies enabling enhanced visualization, quantitative imaging, and functional assessment, along with exciting deep learning, and artificial intelligence applications. Cardiac CT is no longer a mere tool for non-invasive coronary artery stenosis detection in the chest pain diagnostic algorithms; cardiac CT has proven its value for uses as diverse as personalized cardiovascular risk stratification, prediction, and management, diagnosing lesion-specific ischemia, guiding minimally invasive structural heart disease therapy, and planning cardiovascular surgery, among many others. This second edition is an authoritative guide and reference for both novices and experts in the medical imaging sciences who have an interest in cardiac CT.