prospective randomized comparison of an automatically defined scan delay and a manually defined scan delay in coronary CT angiography - FAST Bolus

Results: With the current bolus tracking technique, interpatient variations decrease with higher IDRs and earlier triggering (lower tube voltage and/or lower trigger value), and the true PTDs increase linearly with injection duration. Compared with the current bolus tracking method, the systematic and random errors of the algorithm-predicted PTDs are smaller, do not depend on the IDR, and are predictable over a large range of total iodine doses. The median difference between the true and algorithm-predicted PTD is less than ±1 second for all IDRs and injection durations, and the algorithm was able to predict patient-specific PTDs within ±2 seconds from the true PTD in more than 90% of patients for almost all injection protocols. Conclusions: The new algorithm can robustly predict a patient-specific time of arterial peak enhancement and is better than a best-case scenario for the current bolus tracking technique because interpatient variations are taken into account. It offers a new framework for scan timing optimization and can potentially be used for personalized scan timing in real time.