Accuracy of gantry rotation time of less than 300 ms for modern MDCT systems

The accuracy of gantry rotation times of less than 300 ms has been assessed for two "state-of-the art" MDCT systems. The rotation time was measured at selected nominal rotation times (275 and 280 ms) with a solid-state detector; Unfors Xi probe. The detector was positioned on the inner bottom of the gantry bore. Because a pair of two successive radiation peaks is necessary for determination of the rotation time, the radiation detection was performed with the helical scan mode of operation. Upon completion of the data acquisition, we determined the peak times with the Unfors Xi View software program to obtain the rotation time. The means and standard deviations of the measured rotation times were 275.3 ± 0.5 and 285.1 ± 0.4 ms, respectively. The inaccuracy of the rotation time was approximately 5 ms at most, which was comparable to that previously reported for slower rotation times.