Technical approaches to the optimisation of CT

Carotid CTA: Radiation Exposure and Image Quality with the Use of Attenuation-Based, Automated Kilovolt Selection

“…3,7 Several techniques for CT dose reduction, maintaining image quality on a diagnostic level, became a hot topic in clinical research. [8][9][10][11] Automated attenuation-based tube current modulation or so-called automatic exposure control techniques are widely used. 12,13 All major manufacturers provide iterative reconstruction algorithms, which are fast enough to be used in clinical practice and aim to compensate the increased image noise of lowdose CTA scans.…”

Chest computed tomography using iterative reconstruction vs filtered back projection (Part 1): evaluation of image noise reduction in 32 patients

“…The consequence of such developments is the substantial increase in the radiation dose delivered to patients, individually but also collectively [6], and the subsequent risks, even small, of cancer induction by lowlevel radiation [7,8]. Facing the challenge of providing diagnostic image quality at the lowest radiation dose, the radiological community has modified chest CT protocols at the pace of new technology implementations aiming to reduce radiation exposure, such as anatomical tube current modulation, ECG-controlled tube current modulation or dynamically adjustable pre-patient collimation of the X-ray beam in the z-axis direction [9,10]. Simple dose saving behaviours have also been introduced in the radiologists' daily practice, such as the adjustment of the CT parameters selected at the console, further optimized when individually-adapted, which can be associated with automatic tube current modulation systems [11,12].…”

Model-Based Iterative Reconstruction Enables the Evaluation of Thin-Slice Computed Tomography Images Without Degrading Image Quality or Increasing Radiation Dose

“…The number of CT examinations performed is continuously increasing; therefore, it is important to find methods to lower the radiation dose and establish sufficient image quality for a specific diagnostic task. One such method is to use advanced algorithms for image reconstruction (2) . There is constant development of new reconstruction methods to gain better image quality or to reduce the radiation dose (3) .…”