One-beat acquisition: which technique is best?

Introduction

Imaging the heart in just one beat is now possible because of important technical improvements developed independently by Toshiba and by Siemens.

For Toshiba’s Aquilion One, the large z-coverage (320 slices of 0.5 mm each, for a total coverage of 16 cm in the z-axis) allows heart imaging in a single, prospective ECG-gated acquisition. Spiral acquisition with overlapping structures is no longer needed. Images are acquired in only 175 ms due to a rotation time of 350 ms. Radiation dose is estimated to be between 3 and 5 mSv.