One-beat acquisition: which technique is best?
JF Paul, Centre Chirurgical Marie Lannelongue, Le Plessis-Robinson, France
Introduction
Imaging the heart in just one beat is now possible because of important technical improvements developed independently by Toshiba and by Siemens.
For Toshiba's Aquilion One, the large z-coverage (320 slices of 0.5 mm each, for a total coverage of 16 cm in the z-axis) allows heart imaging in a single, prospective ECG-gated acquisition. Spiral acquisition with overlapping structures is no longer needed. Images are acquired in only 175 ms due to a rotation time of 350 ms. Radiation dose is estimated to be between 3 and 5 mSv.
