Role of Spectral CT in the Diagnosis of Myocarditis/MINOCA in Patients Undergoing cardioCT Investigations for Acute Chest Pain

Innovation in the field of CT (Computed Tomography) with the introduction of new technologies, including the detector-based SpectralCT or Spectral CT (SDCT), has led in recent years to a true "paradigm-shift" from an evaluation of CT images on a purely "observational" to the "radiomics" level, allowing the introduction of additional valuable quantitative information, obtained only through post-processing with software CT images. In particular, Spectral CT is a scanner dedicated to tissue characterization thanks to its ability to "break down" and separate the different materials that make up fabrics, creating sets of monoenergetic (different KeV) or selective (water, iodine, etc.) images.

With this method, it is therefore possible to obtain information previously obtainable with conventional CT equipment, such as iodine maps, medium subtraction tissue characterization data through the calculation of extracellular volume (ECV), the visualization of hyperemia, edema and much more. It is precisely the ability to characterize myocardial tissue, in particular to highlight edema or a fibrotic replacement by ECV calculation and late iodine enhancement (LIE), is one of the most interesting aspects of this new method in the field of imaging cardiovascular, for example in the urgent/emergency setting, where radiology plays a key role in the evaluation of the main causes of acute chest pain, such as heart attack, pulmonary embolism, acute aortic syndromes and myocarditis.

In particular, CT is the first-line method in patients with acute chest pain with low/intermediate probability of coronary artery disease, ECG and/or non-diagnostic troponin(s) or and has already demonstrated its ability to simultaneously exclude disease coronary artery, pulmonary embolism, and aortic dissection through a single examination commonly called "Triple rule out".

To date, however, the non-invasive diagnosis of myocarditis/MINOCA (Myocardial Infarction at coronary arteries) is not obtainable from the evaluation of conventional CT images and is prerogative of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) \[3\]. The added value of the "Spectral CT", thanks to the characteristics described above, could be that of highlighting and/or excluding, in addition to the three aforementioned causes of acute chest pain (i.e. heart attack, pulmonary embolism and acute aortic syndrome), also acute myocarditis or MINOCA The new technology on which SpectralCT is based could in fact make it possible to highlight signs suggestive of myocardial damage, such as ECV, LIE, hyperemia and edema, by post-processing of the same CT images acquired in usual clinical practice.