• Sarah Feger, Matthias Rief, Elke Zimmermann, Peter Martus, Joanne Désirée Schuijf, Jörg Blobel, Felicitas Richter, and Marc Dewey.
• Department of Radiology, Charité Medical School, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
• Plos One. 2015 Jan 1; 10 (5): e0125943.

PurposeThe aim of this study was the systematic image quality evaluation of coronary CT angiography (CTA), reconstructed with the 3 different levels of adaptive iterative dose reduction (AIDR 3D) and compared to filtered back projection (FBP) with quantum denoising software (QDS).MethodsStandard-dose CTA raw data of 30 patients with mean radiation dose of 3.2 ± 2.6 mSv were reconstructed using AIDR 3D mild, standard, strong and compared to FBP/QDS. Objective image quality comparison (signal, noise, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), contour sharpness) was performed using 21 measurement points per patient, including measurements in each coronary artery from proximal to distal.ResultsObjective image quality parameters improved with increasing levels of AIDR 3D. Noise was lowest in AIDR 3D strong (p ≤ 0.001 at 20/21 measurement points; compared with FBP/QDS). Signal and contour sharpness analysis showed no significant difference between the reconstruction algorithms for most measurement points. Best coronary SNR and CNR were achieved with AIDR 3D strong. No loss of SNR or CNR in distal segments was seen with AIDR 3D as compared to FBP.ConclusionsOn standard-dose coronary CTA images, AIDR 3D strong showed higher objective image quality than FBP/QDS without reducing contour sharpness.Trial RegistrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT00967876.

19 keywords...

hide…