Future technical developments in cardiac CT

Abstract

Multi-slice cardiac CT has undergone very rapid technical development since the introduction of 4- slice CT scanners in 1999. However, even with the 64-slice CT scanners of the latest generation, technical challenges remain that lead to limitations in the clinical spectrum and to the exclusion of certain patient cohorts. In this chapter, we will summarize the shortcomings and most frequent pitfalls of today's multi-slice CT scanners and discuss avenues of potential future development aimed at overcoming those obstacles. After the discussion of potential future developments of electron-beam CT and multi-slice CT with more slices and larger detector coverage, we will introduce a new - so-called dualsource CT - scanner concept and discuss the initial clinical experience with these machines. This new scanner technology uses two X-ray sources and two detectors simultaneously and has become available for general use in 2006. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.