CT Radiation Dose Reduction Technologies Help Physicians Provide Safer Exams for Patients

Reducing the radiation dose is a high priority for medical imaging manufacturers and healthcare facilities. Target CTA (computed tomography angiography) is a cardiac protocol for the Aquilion One CT system that is designed for patients including pediatrics. Since the technology can image the entire heart in one rotation, using the Target CTA protocol allows for more accurate targeting of the heart and minimizes padding of the scan range. Target CTA can be most helpful to limit radiation dose during gated cardiac studies.

Expanding its focus on reducing CT radiation dose while maintaining diagnostic confidence, Toshiba Medical Systems (Tokyo, Japan) is expanding its suite of low dose CT technologies. Toshiba presented dose reduction technologies, such as Target CTA and Adaptive Iterative Dose Reduction (AIDR) at this year's Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting, held in Chicago, November 28-December 3, 2010.

AIDR is software that iterates noise out of the image to increase image quality and lower radiation dose. The software intuitively improves the image by removing noise until the optimal image is produced. AIDR will come standard on the Aquilion Premium edition and Aquilion One.

Target CTA and AIDR join a full range of Toshiba dose reduction technologies, including SureExposure, SureExposure Pediatric, QDS, and Boost3D. SureExposure adjusts the dose levels each patient receives based on their size. This enables physicians to acquire high-quality images with the least possible amount of radiation.

SureExposure Pediatric brings the SureExposure benefits to pediatric patients. Simply by entering the patient's age or weight, SureExposure Pediatric automatically makes the adjustments needed to acquire the quality images physicians need to make accurate diagnoses with the least radiation possible.

QDS and Boost3D technologies improve image noise characteristics without increasing dose to the patient. These algorithms can be used to improve image quality while decreasing radiation dose. Applying QDS and Boost3D can achieve dose savings of up to 50% while preserving reconstruction speed.

For facilities conducting more niche exams, Toshiba offers additional dose reduction-software packages, including Variable Helical Pitch and SureCardio Prospective. These technologies come standard on the Aquilion One and can be added to the Aquilion 32, Aquilion 64, and Aquilion Premium CT systems.

SureCardio Prospective combines the effectiveness and flexibility of helical cardiac acquisitions with the dose savings of prospective electrocardiography (ECG) gating. This novel approach produces high-quality diagnostic studies for all heart rates and can reduce radiation dose by up to 80%.

Variable helical pitch (vHP) brings flexibility to scanning combination studies while considerably lowering dose and enhancing workflow. Furthermore, by making better use of the injected contrast material, vHP is less expensive for the hospital or imaging center, and more importantly, safer for the patient. vHP can achieve a reduction of up to 55% in radiation dose over the use of a single gated pitch setting.

Lastly, active collimation, a hardware feature standard on the Aquilion Premium and Aquilion One, is used to minimize the effects of helical over-ranging and reduce patient exposure by blocking out excess exposure at the beginning and end of a helical exam.

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