Feasibility of Low Tube Current Combined with SAFIRE to Reduce Radiation Dose in Dual-energy Coronary Artery CT Angiography / 中国医学影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Purpose Dual-energy coronary artery CT angiography (CTA) is a very promising one-stop examine, but the radiation dose is too high to hinder the development of the technology. The aim of this article is to explore the feasibility of low tube current combined with sonogram-affirmed iterative reconstruction (SAFIRE) technology in dual energy coronary artery CTA scan. Materials and Methods One hundred and twenty patients were randomly divided into four groups according to the tube current of A ballconventional group (180 mAs) and low-dose groups (150 mAs, 120 mAs, 90 mAs). The SAFIRE 3 reconstruction method was used in the low-dose groups. The differences of mean CT values, image noise, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), image quality score and effective dose (ED) of the four groups were compared. Results The coronary artery segment display and the mean CT value of the four groups showed no statistic difference (P>0.05), while the image quality score, noise, SNR, and CNR showed statistic difference (P0.05). The ED was (5.50±1.47) mSv, (4.55±1.16) mSv, (3.41±0.77) mSv and (2.44±0.67) mSv, respectively for the four groups, and there was statistical difference (P<0.05). ED of 90 mAs group decreased 55.62% than that of 180 mAs group. Conclusion Coronary artery CTA using 90 mAs combined with SAFIRE can significantly reduce the radiation dose without losing image quality, thus it has a good prospect of clinical application.