Read axial cardiac CT images using patient left/right, front/back, base/apex, sternum, spine, lungs, pericardium, and epicardial fat. Use these landmarks to keep your place as the scan moves through the heart.

Trace blood from the body into the right atrium, right ventricle, lungs, left atrium, left ventricle, and aorta. Connect each chamber to its nearby valves and great vessels so the CT anatomy becomes a working flow map.

Apply the previous explanations in a guided problem.

Follow the left main coronary artery as it divides into the left anterior descending artery and left circumflex artery. Locate the LAD, diagonal branches, septal branches, circumflex, and obtuse marginal branches by the grooves and heart surfaces they travel along.

Trace the right coronary artery through the right atrioventricular groove and identify major branches such as the acute marginal artery, posterior descending artery, and posterolateral branches. Reason through coronary dominance by asking which artery supplies the PDA.

Apply the previous explanations in a guided problem.

Check your understanding with a short quiz.

Recognize why coronary calcium appears as bright material along the expected artery path on a noncontrast CT. Distinguish coronary calcium from nearby bright structures such as the aortic wall, aortic valve, mitral annulus, pericardium, and chest wall calcification.

Reason from a blocked coronary artery to reduced oxygen delivery, chest pain, heart muscle injury, and dangerous rhythm problems. Link ischemia, myocardial infarction, and sudden cardiac death to the artery territory that has lost blood flow.

Apply the previous explanations in a guided problem.

Check your understanding with a short quiz.

Review this chapter with practice based on your mistakes.