Objective To explore the value of coronary artificial intelligence (AI) in the post-processing and diagnosis of coronary CT angiography (CCTA).

Methods Sixty-four patients with suspected coronary heart disease who were admitted to Third Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University from April to July 2019, including 40 males and 24 females, aged (62.16±14.13) years, were randomly selected. All patients underwent coronary CT angiography. The original image quality was scored in accordance with the Likert scoring standard, and artificial and AI image post-processing were carried out. The time, qualified rate, time of the diagnosis report, and diagnostic efficiency of the two were compared.

Results The post-processing time of AI images of the coronary arteries was about 3 min, and the time of artificial post-processing was 20−30 min after CCTA. The qualified rate of AI post-processing of the coronary arteries was 92.2% (59/64). Compared with manual processing, the AI images of the coronary arteries after processing were smoother, had more small branches and clearer vessel contrast, and can automatically identify coronary artery stenosis. The diagnosis report of coronary artery AI images was completed immediately after image reconstruction (< 1 min), whereas the artificial diagnosis report was about 15 min. The sensitivity of AI plaque in the coronary artery was almost the same as that of artificial detection (i.e., 93.3% and 92.0%, respectively). The specificity of the artificial diagnosis report was 100% and that of AI was 93.8%.

Conclusion Coronary AI has certain advantages in image post-processing speed, image quality and efficiency of reporting diagnosis, and is expected to be an effective auxiliary tool for CCTA analysis.