-Original-

Image Quality and Vessel Rendering Ability of Dynamic Range Compression-Processed Images of Peripheral Vessels in Digital Subtraction Angiography

Yuzo Yamamoto^1,*, Hidenori Yamaguchi^1,2,*, Hiroki Sato^1,*, Toshiya Kariyasu^1,*, Shingo Harashima^1,*, Toshiyuki Yuhara^1,*, Shinji Ota^1,*, Makiko Nishikawa^1,*, Koji Tanigaki^1,* and Haruhiko Machida^1,*

¹Department of Radiology, Adachi Medical Center, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Tokyo, Japan
²Department of Radiology, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo, Japan
^*Contributed equally

Background: In emergency interventional radiology (IR), patient motion and poor breath-holding often result in misregistration during digital subtraction angiography (DSA). As a countermeasure, digital angiography (DA) without subtraction processing is used for observation; however, evaluation is limited to areas overlapping with low X-ray transmissivity structures, such as bone. Dynamic trace (DT) is capable of real-time background compression processing of peripheral blood vessels in DA images and ensures visibility of blood vessels in such areas, without being affected by body motion. We evaluated the image quality and visualization of peripheral vascularity of DA and DT images obtained from DSA of the trunk and examined the usefulness of DT.
Methods: Data from 13 patients who underwent emergency IR involving trunk DSA between October 2022 and June 2023 were analyzed. DA and DT images were created from these angiographic images, and two independent IR specialists used a 4-point scale to visually evaluate the contrast, sharpness, and peripheral vascular visibility of the proximal and distal portions of 42 arteries. The image quality scores for DA and DT images were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and inter-rater agreement was evaluated using weighting coefficients.
Results: As compared with the DA images, the DT images were significantly better at all endpoints (P < 0.001). Inter-rater agreement was moderate for all assessment items.
Conclusions: DT images are not affected by body motion and display better image quality and visualization of peripheral vascularity than DA images, making them useful for emergency IR of the trunk.

J Nippon Med Sch 2025; 92: 279-286

Keywords
interventional radiology, digital subtraction angiography, digital angiography, dynamic trace, Canon Medical Systems

Correspondence to
Hidenori Yamaguchi, MD, PhD, Department of Radiology, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8603, Japan
docci@nms.ac.jp

Received, December 27, 2024
Accepted, February 21, 2025