Description

Intracoronary imaging represents the current gold standard for in-vivo assessment of plaque morphology and guidance of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) plays an increasingly important role in the diagnostic pathway of CAD and represents a non-invasive procedure with wide availability, relatively low costs, and low radiation dose. Owing to its recent technical advances with the introduction of photon-counting CT with higher spatial resolution and diagnostic accuracy as compared to conventional CCTA, as well as recently developed artificial intelligence (AI)-guided analysis softwares, CCTA has the potential to provide more and more clinically essential information about coronary artery disease (CAD) with respect to plaque composition, lesion severity, need for intervention, and periprocedural planning that has traditionally been restricted to invasive coronary angiography and intracoronary imaging. Therefore, there is a timely need for systematic evaluation of advanced CCTA techniques against invasive gold standards. Furthermore, studies comparing CCTA to optical coherence tomography (OCT), the gold standard for plaque phenotyping, are scarce to date. Also, traditional treatment concepts of CAD that are based on obstructive stenosis and ischemia are currently challenged by an increasing body of evidence demonstrating the prognostic impact of plaque burden and composition independent of flow-limitation. Plaque burden and composition may emerge as the next treatment target in CAD. Therefore, the investigators established a systematic institutional registry on patients undergoing paired CCTA and OCT for validation and development of advanced methods to determine coronary plaque morphology, lesion severity, PCI guidance, and it association with long-term clinical outcomes.