• Michelle C Williams, Saroj K Golay, Amanda Hunter, Jonathan R Weir-McCall, Lucja Mlynska, Marc R Dweck, Neal G Uren, John H Reid, Steff C Lewis, Colin Berry, Edwin J R van Beek, Giles Roditi, David E Newby, and Saeed Mirsadraee.
• University of Edinburgh/British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science, University of Edinburgh , Edinburgh, Lothian , UK.
• Open Heart. 2015 Jan 1;2(1):e000234.

IntroductionObserver variability can influence the assessment of CT coronary angiography (CTCA) and the subsequent diagnosis of angina pectoris due to coronary heart disease.MethodsWe assessed 210 CTCAs from the Scottish COmputed Tomography of the HEART (SCOT-HEART) trial for intraobserver and interobserver variability. Calcium score, coronary angiography and image quality were evaluated. Coronary artery disease was defined as none (<10%), mild (10-49%), moderate (50-70%) and severe (>70%) luminal stenosis and classified as no (<10%), non-obstructive (10-70%) or obstructive (>70%) coronary artery disease. Post-CTCA diagnosis of angina pectoris due to coronary heart disease was classified as yes, probable, unlikely or no.ResultsPatients had a mean body mass index of 29 (28, 30) kg/m(2), heart rate of 58 (57, 60)/min and 62% were men. Intraobserver and interobserver agreements for the presence or absence of coronary artery disease were excellent (95% agreement, κ 0.884 (0.817 to 0.951) and good (91%, 0.791 (0.703 to 0.879)). Intraobserver and interobserver agreement for the presence or absence of angina pectoris due to coronary heart disease were excellent (93%, 0.842 (0.918 to 0.755) and good (86%, 0.701 (0.799 to 0.603)), respectively. Observer variability of calcium score was excellent for calcium scores below 1000. More segments were categorised as uninterpretable with 64-multidetector compared to 320-multidetector CTCA (10.1% vs 2.6%, p<0.001) but there was no difference in observer variability.ConclusionsMulticentre multidetector CTCA has excellent agreement in patients under investigation for suspected angina due to coronary heart disease.Trial Registration NumberNCT01149590.

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