A new study from the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland has found that dual-source CT achieves a lower effective radiation dosage for a heart examination than conventional CT.
The study also demonstrated that stenoses can be diagnosed with similar high accuracy as invasive x-ray angiography. The results of the study were published in the June issue of Heart, the official journal of the British Cardiovascular Society.
Researchers analyzed 120 patients with suspected coronary heart disease who were scanned with Erlangen, Germany-based Siemens Healthcare's Somatom Definition CT scanner, which features two x-ray tubes. Siemens' Adaptive Cardio sequence with a step-and-shoot mode was used with the dual-source CT to reduce radiation dose.
The results show that CT coronary angiography with a dual-source CT in step-and-shoot mode produces images of excellent diagnostic quality in patients with stable heart rates up to 70 beats per minute, the researchers said. The study required an effective dose of 2.5 mSv on average with a deviation of plus/minus 0.8 mSv. In previous research, a normal average effective dose for heart scans was between 9 mSv and 21 mSv.
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![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
