SUMMARY:Imaging of the cerebral vessels with use of CT angiogram (CTA) after placement of aneurysmal clips is often limited by clip artifacts. We used a phantom to demonstrate a visible reduction in metal artifact when using the axial technique, compared with the usual CTA helical acquisition. This approach may have some advantage when used for CTA with 64-section scanners in the specific circumstance of immediate postoperative imaging after placement of cerebral aneurysmal clips.
CT angiogram (CTA) is an attractive alternative for patients who require imaging of the cerebral vasculature after aneurysm clipping compared with conventional angiography. Although advances in CT technology and the use of titanium clips have improved the quality of CTA after aneurysmal clipping, artifacts arising from the clip limit the visualization of the aneurysmal neck and nearby vessels in some cases.1 CTA usually requires the use of helical image acquisition, to provide rapid imaging with sufficient coverage, but it is of interest to consider that CT imaging of the brain at most sites is done with the axial technique because, in principle, it has fewer artifacts. 2 We wondered if axial imaging might improve the quality of CTA after placement of aneurysmal clips. This report describes the results of our study with use of a clipped aneurysmal phantom in which we compared the artifacts using the helical and axial techniques.
Case Report/TechniqueWe studied silicone models of aneurysms in both a simple water bath and inside a skull to simulate the beam hardening that occurs in vivo. We immersed the skull in a bucket of tap water for imaging. These silicon phantoms were filled with dilute contrast (1 mL of Omnipaque 350 [GE Healthcare, Piscataway, NJ] mixed in 9 mL of saline). We studied all of the aneurysmal phantoms with a 64-section scanner (GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, Wis) using our postclipping CTA technique (ie, kV, 140; mA, 380; section collimation, 0.625 mm; pitch, 0.96; rotation speed, 0.4 seconds). These were compared with scans with use of the axial technique with a single rotation with 32 detectors collimated to 0.625 mm with a total coverage of 2 cm. Images were reconstructed for both techniques at a 0.625-mm interval (no overlap).We used commercially available titanium and cobalt alloy clips. Titanium is known to have fewer artifacts on CT than cobalt alloy clips.3 A Yasargil (Aesculap, Center Valley, Pa) 7-mm curved blade titanium clip and a 6-mm curved Sugita (Mizuho America, Beverly, Mass) cobalt alloy clip were positioned on the neck of the phantom aneurysm for the testing in the skull, and a titanium Sugita 7-mm blade straight clip was used for the experiments in the water bath.
Test 1.We compared the images of a phantom 10-mm aneurysm in a water bath that had been clipped with a single titanium Sugita clip using both helical and axial imaging techniques.Test 2. The silicon aneurysm model in the skull was imaged with 1 Sugita cobalt alloy clip positioned on the neck of the aneurysm. We obtained axial and helical imag...