Pediatrics & Therapeutics
Open Access
ISSN: 2161-0665
+44 1478 350008
ISSN: 2161-0665
+44 1478 350008
Randy Richardson
St. Joseph��?s Hospital and Medical Center, USA
Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Pediat Therapeut
Objective: Cardiac CT Angiography (CCTA) with three dimensional reconstructions is quickly becoming the new standard for identification and characterization of congenital heart diseases. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate effectiveness of standardized color-coding of the anatomical structures in 3D reconstructions of congenital heart diseases using CCTA. Materials & Methods: An easy-to-follow color coding scheme was implemented for the various anatomical structures. The aorta and its branches (including coronaries) were colored bright red. The pulmonary arteries and veins were colored dark blue and dark pink respectively. The ventricles were colored in a lighter shade of their respective outflow tracts to delineate the two chambers. Hence, the left ventricle was colored a lighter shade of red and the right ventricle was colored a lighter shade of blue. The left and right atria were colored an even lighter shade of red and blue respectively. The tracheo-bronchial tree was depicted in yellow. CCTA data of 5, randomly selected, patients with congenital heart disease was selected. 3D reconstructions of the anatomy were performed with no color, random color, and standardized color schemes (as described above), using commercially available workstations. Total of 12 basic thoracic structures were labeled on each color scheme. Three groups of 40, second year medical students each were randomly selected and shown one of the above three color schemes respectively. They were asked to identify the labeled structures, and their responses were statistically analyzed using ANOVA test. Results: In the ��?No Color� group, 11 of the 40 students failed to identify a single of the twelve labeled anatomical structures (0 of 12) correctly. The average number of correctly identified structures in this group was 2.5. In the ��?Random Color� group, the number of correctly identified structures varied from 1 to 9, with an average of 5.3 structures. In the ��?Standardized Color� group, the number of correctly identified structures varied from 4 to 11 with an average of 6.6 structures. These results were statistically significant with p value of <0.0001. Conclusion: Standardized color-coded 3D reconstructions improve identification of anatomical structures, as opposed to randomly colored or uncolored 3D reconstructions. We propose this color-coding scheme as the standard for demonstrating anatomy of congenital heart disease for 3D reconstructions.