Kinetic imaging provides specialists with better overall image quality than digital subtraction angiography (DSA), according to new research published in Radiology. Kinetic imaging also has a higher signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio than DSA.
The authors enrolled 42 patients undergoing lower limb x-ray angiography from February 2017 to June 2017. The mean patient age was 68.7 years old. Kinetic and DSA images were compared by experienced radiologists.
Overall, when the two imaging methods were directly compared, radiologists indicated kinetic imaging provided better overall quality than DSA 69 percent of the time. In addition, the median signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of raw kinetic images was more than three-times higher than the SNR of raw DSA images and more than two-times higher than postprocessed DSA images. The higher SNR, the authors explained, could help enable lead to a lower contrast media dose being used.
“Kinetic imaging can be used on image series acquired with existing angiography protocols and provides similar information to DSA but with an improved SNR and higher image quality,” wrote Marcell Gyánó of the Heart and Vascular Center at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, and colleagues. “Kinetic imaging may be a safer alternative to DSA that has been used in the last decade in angiography.”
The authors explained why kinetic imaging may be a better fit for imaging blood vessels than DSA.
“Digital x-ray angiography makes blood vessels visible by quantifying radiographic opacity changes caused by a contrast agent injected in the blood stream of the patient,” wrote Marcell Gyánó of the Heart and Vascular Center at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, and colleagues. “DSA performs a simple subtraction, whereas kinetic imaging calculates standard deviation of the pixel opacity. Standard deviation is a better mathematic tool than subtraction to quantitate changes and allows kinetic imaging to extract information about the structure of blood vessels more efficiently than does DSA.”
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.