Anatomical and functional assessment of coronary artery disease: The search for the perfect protocol

Recent years have seen increasing use of cardiac computed tomography (CT) and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) in clinical practice.This reflects impressive technological advances in cardiac imaging, which have made these modalities reliable tools in the assessment of cardiovascular disease, together with reports of their clinical usefulness, particularly concerning coronary artery disease (CAD).In the case of cardiac CT angiography (CCTA), in which advances in the last 10 years have been most marked, this rapid technological development has led to significant improvements in spatial and temporal resolution, as well as progressive reductions in radiation dose, which in turn have led to increasing integration of these modalities into diagnostic protocols for assessing patients with suspected CAD.The work published in this issue of the Journal by Ramos et al. 1 makes an important contribution to understanding the role of these cardiac imaging techniques, and is part of a line of research that this group has been following for some years.2,3 The authors are to be congratulated on the design of their study, in which 101 patients were systematically assessed by an integrated protocol that includes anatomical ଝ Please cite this article as: Araújo Gonc ¸alves P. Avaliac ¸ão anatómica e funcional na doenc ¸a coronária: em busca do protocolo perfeito.