A Universal Protocol for Abdominal CT Examinations Performed on a Photon-Counting Detector CT System: A Feasibility...

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Radiology
• Computed Tomography

Background:

• Photon-counting detector computed tomography (PCD-CT) offers potential advancements over traditional energy-integrating detector (EID) CT systems.
• Evaluating universal abdominal acquisition protocols on PCD-CT is crucial for clinical implementation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of a universal abdominal acquisition protocol on a PCD-CT system.
• To compare the performance of PCD-CT with single-energy (SE) and dual-energy (DE) EID-CT for iodine-based imaging.

Main Methods:

• Iodine inserts in phantoms were scanned using research PCD-CT and clinical EID-CT (SE and DE modes).
• Virtual monoenergetic images (VMIs) were generated, and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for iodine detectability were calculated.
• Optimal VMI energy levels were determined, and PCD-CT performance was compared to EID-CT across different phantom sizes and iodine concentrations.

Main Results:

• Virtual monoenergetic images at 50 keV demonstrated the highest CNR and AUC for both PCD-CT and DECT.
• PCD-CT VMIs at 50 keV showed significantly higher CNR compared to SE images.
• PCD-CT and SE images had comparable AUC, both slightly lower than DE VMI performance.

Conclusions:

• A universal acquisition protocol on PCD-CT generates VMIs with superior iodine CNR and comparable detectability to SECT.
• PCD-CT demonstrates similar performance to DE EID-CT, suggesting its potential as an effective imaging tool.