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Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma

For computed tomography (CT), representing the diagnostic standard for trauma patients, image quality is essential. The positioning of the patient’s arms next to the abdomen causes artifacts and is also considered to increase radiation exposure. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of va...

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Autores principales: Graef, Jessica, Bressem, Keno K., Asbach, Patrick, Hamm, Bernd, Niehues, Stefan M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9689596/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36359504
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12112661
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author Graef, Jessica
Bressem, Keno K.
Asbach, Patrick
Hamm, Bernd
Niehues, Stefan M.
author_facet Graef, Jessica
Bressem, Keno K.
Asbach, Patrick
Hamm, Bernd
Niehues, Stefan M.
author_sort Graef, Jessica
collection PubMed
description For computed tomography (CT), representing the diagnostic standard for trauma patients, image quality is essential. The positioning of the patient’s arms next to the abdomen causes artifacts and is also considered to increase radiation exposure. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of various positionings during different CT examination steps on the extent of artifacts as well as radiation dose using iterative reconstruction (IR). 354 trauma-CTs were analyzed retrospectively. All datasets were reconstructed using IR and three different examination protocols were applied. Arm elevation led to a significant improvement of the image quality across all examination protocols (p < 0.001). Variation in arm positioning during image acquisition did not lead to a reduction of radiation dose (p = 0.123). Only elevation during scout acquisition resulted in the reduction of radiation exposure (p < 0.001). To receive high-quality CT images, patients should be placed with elevated arms for the trunk scan, as artifacts remain even with the IR. Arm repositioning during the examination itself had no effect on the applied radiation dose because its modulation refers to the initial scout obtained. In order to achieve a dose effect by different positioning, a two-scout protocol (dual scout) should be used.
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spelling pubmed-96895962022-11-25 Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma Graef, Jessica Bressem, Keno K. Asbach, Patrick Hamm, Bernd Niehues, Stefan M. Diagnostics (Basel) Article For computed tomography (CT), representing the diagnostic standard for trauma patients, image quality is essential. The positioning of the patient’s arms next to the abdomen causes artifacts and is also considered to increase radiation exposure. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of various positionings during different CT examination steps on the extent of artifacts as well as radiation dose using iterative reconstruction (IR). 354 trauma-CTs were analyzed retrospectively. All datasets were reconstructed using IR and three different examination protocols were applied. Arm elevation led to a significant improvement of the image quality across all examination protocols (p < 0.001). Variation in arm positioning during image acquisition did not lead to a reduction of radiation dose (p = 0.123). Only elevation during scout acquisition resulted in the reduction of radiation exposure (p < 0.001). To receive high-quality CT images, patients should be placed with elevated arms for the trunk scan, as artifacts remain even with the IR. Arm repositioning during the examination itself had no effect on the applied radiation dose because its modulation refers to the initial scout obtained. In order to achieve a dose effect by different positioning, a two-scout protocol (dual scout) should be used. MDPI 2022-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9689596/ /pubmed/36359504 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12112661 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Graef, Jessica
Bressem, Keno K.
Asbach, Patrick
Hamm, Bernd
Niehues, Stefan M.
Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma
title Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma
title_full Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma
title_fullStr Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma
title_full_unstemmed Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma
title_short Changing the Patient’s Position: Pitfalls and Benefits for Radiation Dose and Image Quality of Computed Tomography in Polytrauma
title_sort changing the patient’s position: pitfalls and benefits for radiation dose and image quality of computed tomography in polytrauma
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9689596/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36359504
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12112661
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