Published in:
Open Access
01-12-2018 | Original Article
Automatic determination of cardiovascular risk by CT attenuation correction maps in Rb-82 PET/CT
Authors:
Ivana Išgum, PhD, Bob D. de Vos, MSc, Jelmer M. Wolterink, MSc, Damini Dey, PhD, Daniel S. Berman, MD, Mathieu Rubeaux, PhD, Tim Leiner, MD, PhD, Piotr J. Slomka, PhD
Published in:
Journal of Nuclear Cardiology
|
Issue 6/2018
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Abstract
Background
We investigated fully automatic coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk categorization from CT attenuation correction (CTAC) acquired at rest and stress during cardiac PET/CT and compared it with manual annotations in CTAC and with dedicated calcium scoring CT (CSCT).
Methods and Results
We included 133 consecutive patients undergoing myocardial perfusion 82Rb PET/CT with the acquisition of low-dose CTAC at rest and stress. Additionally, a dedicated CSCT was performed for all patients. Manual CAC annotations in CTAC and CSCT provided the reference standard. In CTAC, CAC was scored automatically using a previously developed machine learning algorithm. Patients were assigned to a CVD risk category based on their Agatston score (0, 1-10, 11-100, 101-400, >400). Agreement in CVD risk categorization between manual and automatic scoring in CTAC at rest and stress resulted in Cohen’s linearly weighted κ of 0.85 and 0.89, respectively. The agreement between CSCT and CTAC at rest resulted in κ of 0.82 and 0.74, using manual and automatic scoring, respectively. For CTAC at stress, these were 0.79 and 0.70, respectively.
Conclusion
Automatic CAC scoring from CTAC PET/CT may allow routine CVD risk assessment from the CTAC component of PET/CT without any additional radiation dose or scan time.