Patient radiation exposure dose reduction using stent-enhanced image processing in percutaneous coronary intervention

We investigated the reduction in patient radiation exposure dose during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) by stent enhancement processing. We examined the effects of dose reduction based on the image quality of stent enhancement processing using a purpose-built dynamic phantom. We evaluated the image contrast (IC) of the stent in stent-enhanced images (SVref), digital angiography (DA), and stent-enhanced images with a 20%, 40%, and 60% lower imaging doses (SV20, SV40, and SV60). We visually evaluated graininess and stent shape using the mean opinion score (MOS) and retrospectively evaluated the acquisition duration of stent enhancement in PCI cases; finally, we estimated the decrease in patient radiation exposure due to stent enhancement. The image contrast of SVref at phantom thicknesses of 20 cm was 51.25 ± 3.82, while the image contrast of DA was significantly reduced at 14.90 ± 1.57 (p < 0.05). We observed a significant decrease in the MOS of graininess in SV60 and MOS of stent shape in DA (p < 0.05). Furthermore, the average imaging duration for stent enhancement using PCI was 22.65 ± 7.43 s, and the maximum imaging duration was 68.07 s. We hypothesize that patient radiation exposure dose can be reduced by up to 60.17 mGy by lowering the imaging dose during the stent enhancement process. Stent enhancement processing improves the visibility of stent images, and can reduce radiation exposure by approximately 40% during confirmation imaging of stents. Our study contributes to the reduction of radiation exposure dose for operators and patients in PCI.