Cardiac and cardiothoracic anatomy in CT

Abstract

Modern cross-sectional imaging techniques such as echocardiography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and multi-slice CT provide high-resolution visualization of cardiac morphology and function (Ooijen 2004). All of these modalities permit imaging of the heart in 2D and, at least to some extent, in 3D. While transthoracic echocardiography is dependent on an acoustic window, which sometimes permits imaging in every desired plane, MRI can be performed in any orientation. Multi-slice CT of the heart relies on an axial data acquisition; however, the high-resolution spiral data sets obtained with modern systems allow for display of small anatomical structures of the heart (Fig. 1.5) and for reformation in virtually any imaging plane. This chapter will introduce cardiac and cardiothoracic anatomy, as displayed by new multi-slice high-resolution CT scanners based on standard 2-dimensional views, which have been established with cardiac catheterization (Bittl 1997), echocardiography, and cardiac MRI and based on 3-dimensional surface reconstructions. The image data used for illustration have primarily been acquired with 4- and 16-slice CT with 0.5-s and 0.42-s rotation time, respectively. Of course, the described anatomical relations are also true for data obtained from multi-slice CT with more than 16-slices or from dual-source CT. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.