AngioWave Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Analysis of Septal Collaterals for Retrograde Chronic Total Occlusion Percutaneous Coronary Intervention.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can augment coronary angiography images to enhance interpretation. We compared two blinded operators' interpretation of chronic total occlusion (CTO) angiograms obtained for retrograde percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) standard vs. AI-enhanced (AngioWave, Concord, MA) images and assessed the association with septal collateral crossing success. We reviewed 50 retrograde CTO PCI angiograms. The most common (83.7%) target vessel was the right coronary artery and target CTOs had high complexity with high rates of proximal cap ambiguity (55.3%), blunt or no stump (79.2%), moderate or severe calcification (50.0%) and high J-CTO scores (2.96 ± 0.93). Retrograde was the first crossing strategy in 44.0% of lesions and was successful in 80%. Operators assigned lower frequency of corkscrew bends (10.2% vs 20.6%, p=0.035) and septal collateral tortuosity (31.7% vs 51.5%, p=0.004) and higher frequency of CC2 collateral size (6.5% vs 0.0%, p=0.007) to AI-enhanced compared with standard angiograms. The aggregate predicted likelihood of crossing (85% vs 70%, p<0.001, Wilcoxon test: p<0.001) and ease of interpretation (9.00 vs 7.00, p<0.001) were higher in the AI-enhanced angiograms. There was no difference in predictive performance for crossing success in the two groups (AUCAI-enhanced = 0.74 and AUCstandard = 0.73, De Long test: p=0.856). AI-enhanced angiograms were assigned a median 10.7% higher predicted likelihood of success. Compared with standard angiograms, AI-enhanced angiograms allow easier interpretation of angiograms and have similar predictive performance for collateral crossing despite showing lower collateral complexity.