Preoperative 3D CT Pulmonary Angiography Images Using 64 Multidetector Row Computed Tomography for Cancer Patients

Abstract

Complete video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) is a well established method that is commonly used for the treatment of small-sized peripheral lung cancer. Noninvasive tests using computed tomography angiography (CTA) that elucidate the branching pattern of bronchi and pulmonary vessels are an important preliminary step in order to conduct a rapid and safe surgical VATS procedure for lung cancer.

We created and evaluated a scanning protocol to obtain rapid and accurate three-dimensional (3D) images. We evaluated our protocol on twenty patients with lung cancer and the data were used to create 3D images as well as to analyze and understand the branching pattern of bronchi and pulmonary vessels for the purpose of preoperative 3DCTA. Both pulmonary arterial and venous phase computed tomography (CT) values were measured using the region of interest (ROI) at the pulmonary artery (PA) where the ROI was located in the left atrium that connected the pulmonary vein (PV). The average CT values of PA and PV on pulmonary artery phase images were 356.9±144.3 (HU) and 126.7±82.9 (HU), respectively. Moreover, average CT values of PA and PV on pulmonary venous phase images were 127.7±59.6 (HU) and 352.0±113.5 (HU), respectively.

We demonstrated that our scanning protocol for preoperative 3D CT angiography using 64 multidetector row computed tomography divided pulmonary vessels into arteries and veins rapidly and accurately.

Preoperative 3D CT pulmonary angiography imaging using our scanning protocol was useful for performing VATS.