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Assessment of thermal sensitivity of CT during heating of liver: an ex vivo study
G D Pandeya1, M J W Greuter, B Schmidt
1Department of Radiology, UMC Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. g.d.pandeya@rad.umcg.nl
Objectives:
The purpose of this study was to assess the thermal sensitivity of CT during heating of ex-vivo animal liver.
Methods:
Pig liver was indirectly heated from 20 to 90 °C by passage of hot air through a plastic tube. The temperature in the heated liver was measured using calibrated thermocouples. In addition, image acquisition was performed with a multislice CT scanner before and during heating of the liver sample. The reconstructed CT images were then analysed to assess the change of CT number as a function of temperature.
Results:
During heating, a decrease in CT numbers was observed as a hypodense area on the CT images. In addition, the hypodense area extended outward from the heat source during heating. The analysis showed a linear decrease of CT number as a function of temperature. From this relationship, we derived a thermal sensitivity of CT for pig liver tissue of -0.54±0.03 HU °C(-1) with an r(2) value of 0.91.
Conclusions:
The assessment of the thermal sensitivity of CT in ex-vivo pig liver tissue showed a linear dependency on temperature ≤90 °C. This result may be beneficial for the application of isotherms or thermal maps in CT images of liver tissue.
