Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of death in the Western world. Patients number are expected to increase in the near future due to obesity and ageing of the population.1 Non-invasive diagnosis of CAD can be performed using different techniques. Ischaemia detection plays a vital role in the clinical treatment selection of individual patients. Imaging techniques capable of showing defects in myocardial perfusion under stress are single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Recent advances...

Pubmed, Embase and Web of Knowledge were searched from January 1995 until March 2014. The search query used in Pubmed was: (“Tomography, X-Ray Computed”[MeSH] OR “Computed Tomography”[TIAB] OR CT [TIAB]) AND ( myocardial OR cardiac OR “coronary artery”) AND (“perfusion imaging”[MeSH] OR dynamic OR stress perfusion) AND 1995/01:2014/05 [dp]. Bibliographies of the selected articles were searched for potentially relevant articles. Selection based on title and abstract was performed by one reviewer. Thereafter, the inclusion for the meta-analysis based on fulltext articles was performed by two...

Fourteen studies (786 participants) out of 5867 were included. A meta-analysis could be performed for three CT perfusion techniques: stationary rest CT, rest dual-energy CT (DECT) and stationary stress CT. In five studies (398 participants), rest CT had a pooled sensitivity of 89% (95% CI: 82-94%) and specificity of 88% (95% CI: 78-94%) compared to rest SPECT on patient level.2-6 The receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve had an area under the curve of 0.94 (95% CI: 0.91-0.96) (figure 1). In four studies (172 participants), rest...

There is large variability in reported techniques and reference standards for CT myocardial perfusion. While CT seems sensitive and specific for detection of functionally significant CAD, studies so far are limited in number and size.

ADDIN RW.BIBReferences 1. Mathers CD, Loncar D: Projections of global mortality and burden of disease from 2002 to 2030. PLoS Med 2006, 3(11):e442. 2. Gupta M, Kadakia J, Jug B, Mao SS, Budoff MJ: Detection and quantification of myocardial perfusion defects by resting single-phase 64-slice cardiac computed tomography angiography compared with SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging. Coronary Artery Disease 2013, . 3. Feuchtner GM, Plank F, Pena C, Battle J, Min J, Leipsic J, Labounty T, Janowitz W, Katzen B, Ziffer J, Cury RC: Evaluation of...