Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the noninvasive quantification of coronary artery stenosis using cardiac software packages and vessel phantoms with known stenosis severity.
Materials and methods: Four different sizes of vessel phantoms were filled with contrast agent and scanned on a 64-slice multidetector computed tomography. Diameter and area stenosis were evaluated by 2 observers blinded from the true measures using 5 different software packages. Measurements were compared with the true measure of the vessel phantoms. The absolute difference in stenosis measurements and intraobserver and interobserver variabilities were assessed.
Results: All software packages show a trend toward larger differences for the smaller vessel phantoms. The absolute difference of the automatic measurements was significantly higher compared with that of the manual measurements in all 5 evaluated software packages for all vessel phantoms (P < 0.05).
Conclusion: Manual stenosis measurements are significantly more accurate compared with automatic measurements, and therefore, manual adjustments are still essential for noninvasive assessment of coronary artery stenosis.