The influence of novel CT reconstruction technique and ECG-gated technique on image quality and patient dose of cardiac computed tomography.

The aim of the present study was to compare image quality and patient dose in cardiac computed tomography angiography (CTA) in terms of volume computed tomography dose index (CTDI vol), dose length product (DLP) and effective dose, when changing from filtered back projection (FBP) to adaptive iterative dose reduction (AIDR) reconstruction techniques. Further aim was to implement prospective electrocardiogram (ECG) gating for patient dose reduction. The study was performed with Aquilion ONE 320-row CT of Toshiba Medical Systems. Analysis of cardiac CT protocols was performed before and after integration of the new software. The AIDR technique showed more than 50 % reduction in CTDIvol values and 57 % in effective dose. The subjective evaluation of clinical images confirmed the adequate image quality acquired by the AIDR technique. The preliminary results indicated significant dose reduction when using prospective ECG gating by keeping the adequate diagnostic quality of clinical images.