Technical Aspects and Applications of Fast Multislice Cardiac CT

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the leading causes of death in Europe and the USA. In 1998, 600,000 deaths caused by CAD were reported in Europe. Almost 50% of these patients died without prior symptoms. The gold-standard modality for diagnosis of CAD is coronary angiography. In 1995 over 1 million diagnostic coronary angiograms were performed in Europe, only about 50% of them with subsequent interventional therapy (Windecker 1999). These facts show the high need for reliable non-invasive imaging tools for early and preventive diagnosis of CAD.