CT Evaluation of Critical Limb Ischemia

Since the advent of multi-detector CT scanners, much progress has been made in the evaluation of peripheral arterial disease. Spiral CT was introduced in the early 1990s providing basic assessment of vasculature during contrast injection studies. However, it was multichannel CT that provided the resolution required to confidently elucidate vascular disease. Multi-slice CT emerged in the late 1990s and allowed for better volume coverage with shorter scan times, as multiple slices could be captured during one gantry rotation with decreased gantry rotation time. Overlapping image slices during reconstruction add to the improved longitudinal resolution, and post-processing techniques using submillimeter slices allow for superior two- and three-dimensional rendering (first figure of this chapter). First table of this chapter provides a list of key terms to better understand the literature.