Our primary objective in this study was to determine the preferred strength setting for the sinogram-affirmed iterative reconstruction algorithm (SAFIRE) in abdominal computed tomography (CT) imaging. Sixteen consecutive clinical CT scans of the abdomen were reconstructed by use of traditional filtered back projection (FBP) and 5 SAFIRE strengths: S1-S5. Six readers of differing experience were asked to rank the images on preference for overall diagnostic quality. The contrast-to-noise ratio was not significantly different between SAFIRE S1 and FBP, but increased with increasing SAFIRE strength. For pooled data, S2 and S3 were preferred equally but both were preferred over all other reconstructions. S5 was the least preferred, with FBP the next least preferred. This represents a marked disparity between the image quality based on quantitative parameters and qualitative preference. Care should be taken to factor in qualitative in addition to quantitative aspects of image quality when one is optimizing iterative reconstruction images.

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DARs to contrast media are not rare but are often not recognized as being linked to contrast administration and may be falsely ascribed to other drugs. These side effects are problematic because the patient is usually without medical supervision.

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