COMPARISON OF PULMONARY NODULE DETECTION, READING TIMES AND PATIENT DOSES OF ULTRA-LOW DOSE CT, STANDARD DOSE CT AND DIGITAL RADIOGRAPHY.

The purpose of the present work was to evaluate performance in pulmonary nodule detection, reading times and patient doses for ultra-low dose computed tomography (ULD-CT), standard dose chest CT (SD-CT), and digital radiography (DR). Pulmonary nodules were simulated in an anthropomorphic lung phantom. Thirty cases, 18 with lesions (45 total lesions of 3-12 mm) and 12 without lesions were acquired for each imaging modality. Three radiologists interpreted the cases in a free-response study. Performance was assessed using the JAFROC figure-of-merit (FOM). Performance was not significantly different between ULD-CT and SD-CT (FOMs: 0.787 vs 0.814; ΔFOM: 0.03), but both CT techniques were superior to DR (FOM: 0.541; ΔFOM: 0.31 and 0.28). Overall, the CT modalities took longer time to interpret than DR. ULD chest CT may serve as an alternative to both SD-CT and conventional radiography, considerably reducing dose in the first case and improving diagnostic accuracy in the second.