CT Imaging of Coronary Stents: Past, Present, and Future
Figure 2
68-year-old male patient with a history of percutaneous coronary intervention with implantation of a 2.5 mm Xience V stent in the proximal RCA. CT shows the stent to be patent without relevant ISR, while there is a subtotal occlusion of the RCA distal to the stent (a, b). The finding was confirmed by coronary angiography (c). The stent lumen is better visible on images reconstructed with a dedicated convolution kernel (b), when compared with a standard convolution kernel (a). The use of a sharp convolution kernel goes along with a markedly increased image noise. Thus, the native vessel can be better assessed from images reconstructed with a smooth convolution kernel.
