Investigative radiology
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Investigative radiology · Apr 2010
Reducing abdominal CT radiation dose with adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction technique.
To assess radiation dose reduction for abdominal computed tomography (CT) examinations with adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASIR) technique. ⋯ ASIR technique allows radiation dose reduction for abdominal CT examinations whereas improving image noise compared with the FBP technique.
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Investigative radiology · Mar 2010
Image fusion in dual energy computed tomography for detection of hypervascular liver hepatocellular carcinoma: phantom and preliminary studies.
This study was designed to determine the optimal blending method and parameters to fuse computed tomography (CT) data sets with different energy levels in dual-energy CT (DECT) for the detection of hypervascular liver lesions. ⋯ Linear blended images with a higher weighting factor than 0.5 and nonlinear blended images with a wide width are able to provide improved lesion-to-liver CNR over the standard linear blending method (with a weighting factor of 0.3). Furthermore, the linear blending method with a low level and a high width provided the most preferred image set for hypervascular hepatocellular carcinoma detection by our radiologists.
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Investigative radiology · Mar 2010
Multicenter Study Comparative StudyDetection and characterization of focal liver lesions: a Japanese phase III, multicenter comparison between gadoxetic acid disodium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging and contrast-enhanced computed tomography predominantly in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and chronic liver disease.
To prospectively evaluate the safety and efficacy of combined unenhanced and gadoxetic acid disodium (Gd-EOB-DTPA)-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) imaging compared with unenhanced MR imaging and triphasic contrast-enhanced spiral computed tomography (CT) for the detection and characterization of focal liver lesions. ⋯ In this study, hepatocyte-specific Gd-EOB-DTPA was shown to be safe and to improve the detection and characterization of focal hepatic lesions compared with unenhanced MR imaging. When compared with spiral CT, Gd-EOB-DTPA enhanced MRI seems to be beneficial especially for the detection for smaller lesions or hepatocellular carcinoma underlying cirrhotic liver.
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Investigative radiology · Mar 2010
Handling a high relaxivity contrast material for dynamic breast MR imaging using higher thresholds for the initial enhancement.
To increase specificity of gadobenate dimeglumine-enhanced breast magnetic resonance (MR) imaging without losing sensitivity. ⋯ Specificity of gadobenate dimeglumine-enhanced breast MR imaging can be increased without limiting its high sensitivity.
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Investigative radiology · Feb 2010
Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging of the liver using tracking only navigator echo: feasibility study.
To introduce and assess the TRacking Only Navigator echo (TRON) technique for diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) of the liver. ⋯ TRON offers sharp diffusion-weighted images of the liver using an efficient scan time, making it an excellent alternative to RT and FB DWI. The moderate to poor agreement in ADCs of liver metastases between TRON and RT DWI requires further investigation.