SCCT continues to offer the tremendously successful CTA Academies. These intensive two-day training courses with expert faculty provide a unique opportunity to improve your cardiovascular CT reading skills. The courses are directed towards cardiologists, radiologists, and other physicians with at least basic prior knowledge and especially those with clinical experience in CT interpretation. Leaders in the field serve as mentors and provide immediate feedback of your interpretation results through corresponding invasive coronary angiography, which allows assessment and provides "calibration" for findings in your practice. All new coronary CT angiography cases with a wide range of difficulty levels have been compiled, so the 2010 CTA Academies will be extremely useful to "brush up" reading skills for participants of earlier courses.

The course material is selected in a way to cover typical findings, artifacts that can mimic or obscure stenoses, as well as difficult anatomic situations. Cases are selected to highlight specific teaching points. Participants will have extensive exposure to interpretation of carefully selected coronary CT angiography datasets, including hands-on evaluation of 50 coronary CTA cases (maximum of 2 participants per workstation and at least 15 minutes allocated to each case). Every CTA case will then be reviewed on a large screen followed by viewing of invasive coronary angiography for correlation.

Participants will be able to have these 50 cases count towards the "Minimum Number of Mentored Examinations Interpreted" according to the ACCF/AHA Clinical Competence Statement on Cardiac CT and MR (Budoff et al, JACC 46:2005;383-402), which lists 50 cases of mentored examinations interpreted as a requirement for Level 1 training, 150 cases for Level 2 training, and 300 cases for Level 3 training.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the joint sponsorship of Educational Symposia and the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. Educational Symposia is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Educational Symposia designates this educational activity for a maximum of 15.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)�. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.