[Multislice CT of the heart: clinical applications]

Since the introduction of last generation multislice MSCT systems and the development of simultaneous electrocardiographic-tracing image acquisition and retrospective reconstruction techniques into clinical routine, cardiac MSCT has been considered a very useful non-invasive technique for the study of cardiac pathology in the daily clinical practice. One of the main clinical applications of this diagnostic technique is the evaluation of the coronary arteries including detection and quantification of coronary calcium, multislice CT coronary angiography (anatomy, anatomical variants and anomalies of the origin and course), the angiographic evaluation of the patency of aortocoronary by-pass grafts and coronary stents, and plaque characterization. The new reconstruction and postprocessing programs allow to obtain, in addition, parameters of myocardial morphology and contraction and cardiac function. Other clinical applications include the characterization of cardiac masses and the evaluation of the pericardium.