[Development of Digital Subtraction Angiography Method for Pediatric Cardiac Angiography Using Subtraction Technique with Heart Rate].

Digital subtraction angiography (DSA) has been used in head and abdomen. However, in recent years, the use of cardiac DSA has been reported. In this report, we discuss the development of a DSA method with heart rate to clearly visualize blood vessels of pediatric patients. The patients included five children who underwent pulmonary artery angioplasty. We used a process to resize the original images and performed two kinds of subtraction methods as well as visually evaluated the images and performed comparisons between pairs of images using the Scheffe's method. Subtraction techniques were used to eliminate motion artifacts of the heart, thoracic vertebra, ribs, and diaphragm. Visualization of the image of blood vessels of pulmonary arteries using the subtraction technique with heart rate was superior to the visualization of the conventional DSA images of peripheral blood vessels of the lung and pulmonary arteries. Use of subtraction technique with heart rate makes it possible to obtain more detailed information on pediatric cardiac angiography images noninvasively.