CT Imaging of Coronary Stents: Past, Present, and Future
Figure 1
62-year-old male patient with a history of myocardial infarction and surgical revascularization therapy. 14 years after surgery, he developed CABG stenoses and subsequent stenting. CT was performed for ruling ISR. The 3D-volume rendered CT image shows the course of the stented vein graft to the LAD. A left internal mammary artery graft to a marginal branch is also depicted (a). Multiplanar curved reformats reconstructed with a dedicated sharp convolution kernel (b) and a smooth standard convolution kernel for cardiac CT angiography (c) show three CABG stents with a nominal diameter of 3 mm each. There are two TAXUS stents with 132 μm strut thickness (arrows) and a Xience V stent with 81 μm strut thickness (arrowhead). There is notably more blooming with the thicker struts and the stent lumen is better visible with the dedicated convolution kernel. ISR was ruled out by CT. This finding was confirmed by coronary angiography (d).
