Study on motion artifacts in coronary arteries with an anthropomorphic moving heart phantom on an ECG-gated multidetector computed tomography unit

Acquisition time plays a key role in the quality of cardiac multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) and is directly related to the rotation time of the scanner. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of heart rate and a multisector reconstruction algorithm on the image quality of coronary arteries of an anthropomorphic adjustable moving heart phantom on an ECG-gated MDCT unit. The heart phantom and a coronary artery phantom were used on a MDCT unit with a rotation time of 500 ms. The movement of the heart was determined by analysis of the images taken at different phases. The results indicate that the movement of the coronary arteries on the heart phantom is comparable to that in a clinical setting. The influence of the heart rate on image quality and artifacts was determined by analysis of several heart rates between 40 and 80 bpm where the movement of the heart was synchronized using a retrospective ECG-gated acquisition protocol. The resulting reformatted volume rendering images of the moving heart and the coronary arteries were qualitatively compared as a result of the heart rate. The evaluation was performed on three independent series by two independent radiologists for the image quality of the coronary arteries and the presence of artifacts. The evaluation shows that at heart rates above 50 bpm the influence of motion artifacts in the coronary arteries becomes apparent. In addition the influence of a dedicated multisector reconstruction technique on image quality was determined. The results show that the image quality of the coronary arteries is not only related to the heart rate and that the influence of the multisector reconstruction technique becomes significant above 70 bpm. Therefore, this study proves that from the actual acquisition time per heart cycle one cannot determine an actual acquisition time, but only a mathematical acquisition time.