If you are looking for an imaging center for your heart scan, you should keep in mind that not all heart scanners are the same. Heart scans are more technically challenging than scans of other parts of the body because the heart is always in motion. In addition, the vessels that are evaluated are very small. Because of this, you should make sure that the center where you receive your scan has an advanced CT (computed tomography ) scanner.
Heart Scans using Multidetector Computed Tomography
Advanced CT heart scans use multidetector computed tomography, also known as MDCT. With MDCT, multiple "detectors" are used to generate images from a CT scan. This provides for a vast improvement in image quality that is necessary to evaluate the heart and small coronary arteries. New generation scanners use 64 detectors, and are also known as 64-slice CT scanners.
64 Slice CT Heart Scans
64 slice CT scans are the most recent development in MDCT. These scanners provide a dramatic improvement in temporal and spatial resolution, and make imaging of the heart effective. Temporal resolution refers to improvement in the time it takes to create images. Unlike other parts of the body, the heart is constantly moving, and high temporal resolution is necessary to visualize the vessels of the heart as it moves. Spatial resolution refers to the size of structures that may be visualized. 64-slice CT scans have been shown to be effective in evaluating structures in the size of 0.5 to 1.0 millimeters. This is important in scans of the heart as the width of the coronary arteries are in this range, especially if there is narrowing.
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