Radiological aspects of CO(2) peripheral DSA: Preliminary analysis on the dedicated protocols

OBJECTIVES: Thanks to its lack of allergic reactions and renal toxicity, CO(2) represents an alternative to iodine as a contrast medium for peripheral subtraction angiography. Since CO(2) has a lower and negative contrast than iodine, postprocessing DSA and stacking are mandatory. So, it seems that higher doses than traditional iodine angiography are required. We addressed the dosimetric aspects of CO(2) angiography for two different commercial DSA-apparatus. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two different radiological suites were analyzed by recreating the same setup on all the apparatuses: we used a PMMA slabs phantom with a MPD Barracuda dosimeter on its side to collect all radiological parameters. RESULTS: Results show that the irradiation parameters were left completely unchanged between the traditional and CO(2) angiographic programs. CONCLUSIONS: This leads to thinking that these CO(2) protocols do not operate on the X-ray emission, but only differ on image manipulation. The possibility of improvements by changing radiological parameters are still not explored and really promising.