Quantitation of cardiac function by cine-CT.

The recent introduction of a millisecond CT scanner specifically designed for cinematographic real-time imaging of the heart is a significant advance, and its introduction could parallel the impact that cineangiography had on cardiac diagnosis. A major advantage of CT is that central catheterization for angiographic purposes is avoided, as relatively small amounts of intravenous contrast medium provide excellent CT contrast enhancement of the blood pool and cardiac structures. In this article, the cine-CT scanner and the scanning techniques involved are described briefly, and the methods used to analyze CT data are discussed. The initial results are described, as is the potential of cine-CT for quantitating cardiac function.