Aortic stent placement is commonly performed to treat aortic coarctation in children. Reliable stent lumen delineation and measurement is important to assess in-stent stenosis during follow-up. Multiple stents types and sizes are available but little is known about their appearance on computed tomography (CT) imaging. The radiation dose associated with CT is a concern. Especially in children because they are more sensitive to the effects of radiation and have a longer expected lifetime to develop harmful radiation effects. Therefore, radiation dose should be as low...

Six different stents were expanded to an inner diameter of 20 mm using an atlas balloon and placed in a non-pulsatile anthropomorphic chest phantom and imaged using a 256-slice CT-scanner (Figure 1). The following stents were used: Atrium V12 covered stent (stainless steel, covering with PTFE), Andramed AS-30 XL (cobalt-chromium), CP covered stent (0.013” platinum / iridium), CP stent (0.013” platinum / iridium), EV3 LD Mega (stainless steel) and EV3 LD Max (stainless steel). The stent lumen was filled with diluted contrast gel and the...

An example of FBP and IR at normal and low dose is shown in Figure 3. At normal dose the median area-derived diameter (range) for all stents with FBP and IR was 17.9 mm (17.3–18.8) and 18.1 mm (17.4–19.0), respectively and with low-dose 17.9 mm (17.1–18.4) and 17.6 mm (17.6–18.5), respectively. Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability at normal dose was good, with ICCs of 0.892 and 0.813. Intra-rater reliability at low-dose was good (0.949) while inter-rater reliability decreased (0.572) (Figure 4). Agreement for intra-rater and inter-rater...

Assessment of the area derived diameter of pediatric stents with CT is reliable and reproducible in a phantom setting with both FBP and IR at normal dose. However, assessment of stent diameter at low dose is less reliable.