Abdominal Digital Radiography with a Novel Post-Processing Technique: Phantom and Patient Studies

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic image quality of low dose abdominal digital radiography processed with a new post-processing technique. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Abdominal radiographs from phantom pilot studies were post-processed by the novel and conventional post-processing methods of our institution; the proper dose for the subsequent patient study of 49 subjects was determined by comparing image quality of the two preceding studies. Two radiographs of each patient were taken using the conventional and derived dose protocols with the proposed post-processing method. The image details and quality were evaluated by two radiologists. RESULTS: The radiation dose for the patient study was derived to be half of the conventional method. Overall half-dose image quality with the proposed method was significantly higher than that of the conventional method (p < 0.05) with moderate inter-rater agreement (κ = 0.60, 0.47). CONCLUSION: By applying the new post-processing technique, half-dose abdominal digital radiography can demonstrate feasible image quality compared to the full-dose images.