Feasibility of morphological assessment of coronary artery calcification with electrocardiography-gated non-contrast computed tomography: a comparative study with optical coherence tomography

To investigate the feasibility of pre-procedural morphological assessment of coronary artery calcification in severely calcified lesions with electrocardiography (ECG)-gated non-contrast computed tomography (CT). Severely calcified coronary arteries in patients who underwent ECG-gated non-contrast CT prior to optical coherence tomography (OCT)-guided percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were studied retrospectively. CT and OCT data were co-registered by marking landmark structures such as side branches and reviewed side by side with cross-sectional images. The maximum calcium angle (MCA) and presence of nodular calcification (NC) were evaluated. A total of 496 cross-sections in 16 lesions were included in this analysis. The Pearson correlation ...