Chest imaging with flat-panel detector at low and standard doses: comparison with storage phosphor technology in normal patients

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of standard-dose and low-dose cesium iodide (CsI)-doted amorphous silicon (a-Si) flat-panel detector technology (FDT) as compared with storage-phosphor technology (SPT) in the depiction of relevant anatomical structures in chest radiography. In 75 patients referred for thoracic CT, digital chest radiographs were randomly obtained with either SPT at a standard dose (speed class S400, n=25), standard-dose FDT (S400, n=25) or FDT at a low dose (S800, n=25). Five radiologists evaluated the visibility of eight pulmonary and mediastinal anatomical structures using a five-point rating scale. To determine statistically significant differences between the three groups, the Mann-Whitney U-test was employed. No statistically significant differences were found in the depiction of eight criteria between SPT and standard-dose or low-dose FDT chest radiographs. The performance of FDT S400 was equal to SPT for most criteria and better for retrocardiac structures and soft tissue. FDT S800 was inferior to both SPT and FDT S400. Standard-dose FDT is equivalent to SPT in the depiction of relevant anatomical structures of the chest. Our results also indicate that a dose reduction of 50% with FDT may result in small but not significant decrease of image quality.

Contrast-detail evaluation and dose assessment of eight digital chest radiography systems in clinical practice

“…In CR, image quality is deteriorated by internally generated noise in these systems, i.e., luminescence and granularity noise [1,2]. Superior image quality for CsI-FPD systems compared with GOS-FPD and CR could have been expected and has been reported in a number of studies [24,[28][29][30]. However, in the present study, the effective dose found for the CsI-FPD systems was at least a factor 2 lower than with the other systems.…”

Dose reduction in skeletal and chest radiography using a large-area flat-panel detector based on amorphous silicon and thallium-doped cesium iodide: technical background, basic image quality parameters, and review of the literature

“…To summarize the results of experimental and skeleton studies, FD at a simulated speed of 800, resulting in a dose reduction of 50%, is equivalent to SFR and SPR at a speed of 400 in terms of image quality criteria [9-11, 13-17, 22-24]. During routine chest radiography a dose reduction of 50% seemed to be possible [25,27]. Strotzer et al [26] performed a study with 30% dose reduction and the results showed no differences in image quality between FD at a simulated speed of 400 and 560, thus a dose reduction of 30% is possible without loss in diagnostic reliability.…”

“…Herrmann et al [27] evaluated the depiction of relevant anatomical structures in chest radiography using FD at simulated speeds of 400 and 800 and SFR at a speed of 400. In 75 patients referred for thoracic CT, digital chest radiographs were randomly obtained with either SPR or FD at a simulated speed of 400 or 800.…”

Clinical results of CsI-detector-based dual-exposure dual energy in chest radiography

“…The intrinsic superiority of detector-based radiography over film-screen and computed radiography also improved the image quality of DE techniques in direct comparison [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23].…”