Clinical Cardiac CT (Book & DVD-ROM) by Ethan Halpern

From the Publisher

This textbook atlas is designed to provide the tools to confidently perform and accurately interpret CT imaging of cardiac anatomy and function. The book opens with essential information on fundamental techniques of CT angiography, normal coronary anatomy, and anatomic variations. Individual chapters address coronary artery disease, risk assessment with calcium scoring, heart valve assessment, cardiac morphology, and cardiac function. The book also covers advanced topics including CT evaluation of coronary bypass grafts and coronary stents, and CT guidance for electrophysiology and percutaneous cardiac interventions. An accompanying DVD-ROM features high-quality three-dimensional displays of cardiac anatomy and more than 100 cine displays of cardiac function in real clinical applications.

Highlights:
*Special emphasis on the complementary nature of anatomic and functional cardiac information helps the clinician optimize patient care
*Clinical protocols provide step-by-step guidelines for coronary CTA and triple scans for evaluating coronary arteries, aorta, and pulmonary arteries
*Practical discussions of the evaluation of coronary anatomy, heart valves, and function
*Coverage of advanced issues in cardiac CT such as plaque characterization, evaluating cardiac status of postoperative patients, and planning interventional procedures
*More than 650 carefully labeled CT images demonstrate key concepts
*Parallel organization of the DVD-ROM and book chapters enables the reader to rapidly locate relevant cine displays

Comprehensive and up-to-date, this book is an indispensable reference for beginners and experienced radiologists, echocardiographers,interventional cardiologists, and cardiac surgeons. It will also be a valuable resource for trainees in radiology, cardiology, and cardiothoracic surgery.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Lisa Diethelm, MD (Ochsner Clinic Foundation)
Description:The author uses the term text-atlas to describe this book, accurately emphasizing the strength of the illustrations which are used to display coronary and cardiac structures and diseases.
Purpose:The author summarizes his purpose as to provide "a didactic tutorial to optimize CT technique" with "CT case material that reflects the full spectrum of normal variations and pathologic findings...seen in an adult cardiology practice." The book is focused and clearly written and the illustrations are excellent. It achieves the author's purpose.
Audience:The text, illustrations, and case material function well together and are particularly useful to practicing radiologists who wish to start a cardiac CT program or to refine a preexisting program. The emphasis is on image acquisition, issues of data processing, and image interpretation. Physiology is not strongly emphasized, so the book is directed more toward radiologists than to clinical cardiologists.
Features:The book emphasizes practical elements of imaging of coronary arteries, stents, bypass grafts, native and prosthetic valves. Calcium scoring, ablation therapy for arrhythmia, and surgical remodeling of the LV are specifically addressed but not investigated in depth. The accompanying DVD contains much case material presented in cine loops, which is useful for learning to judge myocardial motion and valve function — a process more familiar to echocardiographers than to radiologists. LV noncompaction and takotsubo cardiomyopathy are not addressed and, admittedly, these areuncommon entities but examples and brief discussion would be useful to radiologists studying for examinations and needing to recognize them should they arise in the course of clinical practice. The DVD display requires a screen matrix of at least 1024 x 768; at this resolution, those with presbyopia may find the text of the legends smaller than is entirely comfortable. The publisher could have improved the situation by presenting the DVD's table of contents as a drop-down menu, and harvested the additional screen area for a more generous font.
Assessment:This practical book will be particularly useful to radiologists experienced in noncardiac CT who wish to start or improve a cardiac CT program. Although not as extensive in its scope as Gerber et al.'s Computed Tomography of the Cardiovascular System (informa Healthcare/Taylor & Francis, 2007) , the clarity and brevity of this book make it a welcome introduction to the topic. As such, it is accessible to radiology residents and fellows. The accompanying DVD is particularly valuable in learning to assess myocardial motion and valve function.

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