Image Quality of Low-Energy Pulmonary CT Angiography: Comparison With Standard CT
Autor: | Izhak Nissenbaum, Naama R. Bogot, Jacob Sosna, Alexander A. Fingerle, Dorith Shaham |
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Rok vydání: | 2011 |
Předmět: |
Adult
Male medicine.medical_specialty Image quality Iohexol Contrast Media Pulmonary Artery Statistics Nonparametric Diagnosis Differential Cohen's kappa medicine Image noise Humans Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging Prospective Studies Aged Aged 80 and over medicine.diagnostic_test business.industry Angiography General Medicine Middle Aged medicine.disease Pulmonary embolism medicine.anatomical_structure Radiographic Image Interpretation Computer-Assisted Female Radiology Tomography Pulmonary Embolism Tomography X-Ray Computed business medicine.drug Artery |
Zdroj: | American Journal of Roentgenology. 197:W273-W278 |
ISSN: | 1546-3141 0361-803X |
DOI: | 10.2214/ajr.10.5318 |
Popis: | The purpose of this article is to prospectively compare visualization of central and peripheral pulmonary arteries on simultaneously acquired low-energy and standard pulmonary CT angiography.Thirty-three consecutive patients (20 women and 13 men; mean age, 55.6 years; range, 21-92 years) with suspected pulmonary embolism (PE) were scanned (140 kVp; 250-300 mA) on a single-source dual-layer dual-energy MDCT scanner. Attenuation and image noise were measured at the main and segmental pulmonary arteries. Signal-to-noise ratios were calculated. Two blinded experienced radiologists assessed segmental and subsegmental artery visibility in consensus, using slab maximum-intensity-projection (MIP) reconstructions. Nonparametric sign test and kappa statistic were used for statistical analysis.PE was detected in three patients (9.1%); two segmental vessel and subsegmental emboli were seen in the low-energy images only. Higher attenuation was noted in low-energy versus standard images for all arteries evaluated, with a mean (± SD) increase of 66.6 ± 4.4 HU (p0.0001). Low-energy images improved visualization of segmental and subsegmental arteries from 97.0% to 99.2% and from 88.0% to 93.9%, respectively. A larger number of subsegmental vessels was seen on low-energy MIP reconstructions in 69.7% (95% CI, 36.5-71.89%) of studies compared with 9.1% on the standard images. Visualization of subsegmental vessels was superior in 55.5% of cases using low-energy imaging. The mean image noise increased by 9.7 ± 0.6 HU (p0.0001). The mean signal-to-noise ratio showed no significant difference in the low-energy (8.2) versus standard (8.1) CT images (p = 0.7759).Improved visualization of central and peripheral arteries can be obtained with low-energy pulmonary CT angiography, without a substantial decrease in image quality. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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