Diagnostic Usefulness of Contrast Enhancement and Noise Reduction of Artificial Intelligence-based ClariACE in Delay Enhancement Imaging of Cardiac CT

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA), which is currently widely used as a non-invasive study for coronary artery disease, obtains not only arterial phase images but also 5-7 minutes delayed phase images, serving as an aid in left ventricular(LV) myocardial diagnosis. However, since the delayed examination is performed with minimal radiation exposure, image noise increases and the degree of contrast enhancement is unclear. Therefore, we attempted to demonstrate clinical effectiveness by emphasizing the degree of contrast enhancement and improving image quality using ClariACE, a recently developed artificial intelligence(AI)-based CT contrast enhancement software. For 45 patients with myocardial disease who underwent CCTA and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) within one month, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were obtained and quantitatively evaluated using Myocardial delayed contrast-enhanced (MDE) CT images before and the administration of ClariACE. Additionally, qualitative evaluation was performed using a 5-point scale method. In quantitative evaluation, noise was reduced by 45.3%, SNR increased by 136.0%, and CNR increased by 117.7%. The qualitative evaluation showed a 42.7% score improvement. Therefore, the use of ClariACE is expected to effectively improve the diagnosis of myocardial-related lesions in MDE CT images.