Diagnostic accuracy of dual-source CT angiography for evaluation of coronary artery and comparative analysis of the DSCT angiography of the internal carotid artery plaque with the histopathological specimens

The purpose of this study was to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of a dual-source CT (DSCT) coronary angiography in parallel with a CT angiography. On the other hand, we compared the DSCT angiography of the internal carotid artery plaque with the histopathological specimens. Ninety patients underwent DSCT and an invasive coronary angiography (ICA). All segments were analyzed at 60 and 70 % of R-R interval initially. After finding the reconstruction interval, image quality was divided for each coronary segment on the four-point Likert scale. Also, of these patients, 30 cases that had neurological symptoms and carotid arteries also were evaluated. The degree of stenosis was assessed according to the North American Carotid Endarterectomy Trial (NASCET) criteria. A patient-specific analysis revealed that the method sensitivity was 98.59 %, specificity was 94.7 %, positive predictive value (PPV) was 98.57 %, negative predictive value (NPV) was 95 %, and accuracy was 97.7 %. Also, the kappa statistics did show high values in agreement with the histopathological findings (type III k = 0.82, types IV–V = 0.86, type VI = 0.81, type VII = 0.88, and type VIII = 0.67). Our results suggest that the DSCT has a high diagnostic accuracy for the evaluation of CAD and could demonstrate a high correlation between non-invasive imaging findings with DSCT and histopathological specimens.