High-pitch dual-source CT for coronary artery calcium scoring: A head-to-head comparison of non-triggered chest versus triggered cardiac acquisition

Background: To determine the effect of low-dose, high-pitch non-electrocardiographic (ECG)-triggered chest CT on coronary artery calcium (CAC) detection, quantification and risk stratification, compared to ECG-triggered cardiac CT.

Methods: We selected 1,000 participants from the ImaLife study, 50% with coronary calcification on cardiac CT. All participants underwent non-contrast cardiac CT followed by chest CT using third-generation dual-source technology. Reconstruction settings were equal for both acquisitions. CAC scores were determined by Agatston's method, and divided dichotomously (0, > 0), and into risk categories (0, 1-99, 100-399, >_400). We investigated the influence of heart rate and body mass index (BMI) on risk reclassification.

Results: Positive CAC scores on cardiac CT ranged from 1 to 6926 (median 39). Compared to cardiac CT, chest CT had sensitivity of 0.96 (95%CI 0.94-0.98) and specificity of 0.99 (95%CI 0.97-0.99) for CAC detection (kappa = 0.95). In participants with coronary calcification on cardiac CT, CAC score on chest CT was lower than on cardiac CT (median 30 versus 40, p= 30 versus 5.2% for BMI < 30, p = 0.001), but there was no effect of heart rate.

Conclusion: Low-dose, high-pitch chest CT, using third-generation dual-source technology shows almost perfect agreement with cardiac CT in CAC detection and risk stratification. However, low-dose chest CT mainly underestimates the CAC score as compared to cardiac CT, and results in inaccurate risk categorization in BMI >= 30.