Quantitative coronary angiography of bioresorbable vascular scaffold: A core lab perspective

Invasive quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) is one of the most commonly used methods for the assessment of coronary vessels with bioresorbable scaffolds (BRSs) or metallic stents. The same QCA parameters can be used for the assessment of the performance of BRSs as used in the metallic stents. Nonetheless, in contrast to metallic stents, some of the polymeric scaffolds are partially translucent and radiolucent to gamma radiation with the exception of the radiopaque platinum markers at the edges, which could affect the QCA measurements. In addition, BRSs have their unique property as compared to metallic stents, which could make the interpretation of the conventional parameters complicated. In this chapter, we present the summary of QCA parameters for the assessment of the performance of BRSs and differential impact of BRSs and metallic stents on QCA measurements.