Low-dose celiac CT angiography with fixed current-time product / 中华放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To characterize the feasibility of low-dose CT angingraphy on 16-slice multislice computed tomography (16-MSCT), and its relationship to the noise in the pre-contrast image and enhancement value.Methods Forty-three consecutive patients (male 21, female 22, mean age 59 years, median age 56 years) underwent abdominal 16-MSCT (Toshiba Aquilion 16) with constant scanning parameters including 120 kVp, a 0.5-second gantry rotation time, a pitch of 0.938 1, and 16×1-mm detector collimation.The mA was set at 200 in the pre-contrast scan and 160 in the contrast-enhanced scan.The arterial phase images were retrospectively reconstructed with 1-mm slice thickness, 0.8 mm interval.The pre-contrast noise was defined as the standard deviation (SD) of the aorta at the level of right posterior crura of diaphragm.The enhancement of aorta was also measured at level of celiac artery.The volume rendering of CT angiography was made and classified into three grades (excellent, good, bad).Receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to evaluate the relationship between the image quality of CT angiography and noise in the pre-contrast image and enhancement value.Results Twenty-five cases had the aorta enhancement between 300.0--400.0 HU.The sensitivity and specificity of excellent CTA image was 75% and 62%, respectively when the SD was 12.00.Eighteen cases had the aorta enhancement more than 400.0 HU.The sensitivity and specificity of excellent CTA image was all 100% when the SD was 12.25, and 100% and 75%, respectively when the SD was 13.35.The area under curve of CTA image quality and enhancement in receiver-operated characteristic analysis was O.907.The enhancement was more than 356.7 HU when the sensitivity and specificity of excellent CTA image was 100% and 60%, respectively, and 389.8 HU when 78% and 80%.When the enhancement was more than 442.4 HU, the specificity of excellent CTA image was 100%.Conclusions MSCT angiography with low radiation dose is feasible.Good CT angiography demands great enhancement, and then, the needed mAs is lower when the SD is smaller.