A study to validate the method based on DIMOND quality criteria for cardiac angiographic images

A method based on image quality criteria (QC) for cine-angiography was developed to measure the quality of cine-angiograms (CA). A series of 30 CA for left ventriculography (LV) and left and right coronary angiography (LCA, RCA) have been scored and 172 readings were obtained. Standard deviation of quality scores indicated the reproducibility of the method. Each part of CA was examined separately, giving scores for LV, LCA and RCA and a total score (TS), with clinical (C) and technical (T) criteria defined and examined separately. In 83% of the studies TS was >0.8 and with standard deviation from 0.02 to 0.21. In general, LV had a lower score and greater disagreement compared with RCA and LCA. Disagreement was greater in T, compared with C. In conclusion, these results indicate that QC, translated into a scoring system, yields reproducible data on the quality of cardiac images.