Purpose: To assess image quality and radiation dose reduction with hybrid iterative reconstruction of pediatric chest and abdominal computed tomographic (CT) data compared with conventional filtered back projection (FBP).
Materials and methods: A total of 234 patients (median age, 12 years; age range, 6 weeks to 18 years) underwent chest and abdominal CT in this institutional review board-approved HIPAA-compliant retrospective study. CT was performed with a hybrid adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASIR)-enabled 64-detector row CT scanner. Scanning protocols were adjusted for clinical indication and patient weight to enable acquisition of reduced-dose CT images in all patients, and tube current was further lowered for ASIR protocols. Weight, age, and sex were recorded, and objective noise was measured in the descending thoracic aorta for chest CT and in the liver for abdominal CT. Of the 234 consecutive patients who underwent ASIR-enabled CT (115 chest and 119 abdominal examinations), 70 patients had undergone prior FBP CT. ASIR and FBP CT studies (29 chest and 41 abdominal studies) in these 70 patients were reviewed for image quality, artifacts, and diagnostic confidence by two pediatric radiologists working independently. Data were analyzed with multiple paired t tests.
Results: Compared with FBP, ASIR enabled dose reduction of 46.4% (3.7 vs 6.9 mGy) for chest CT and 38.2% (5.0 vs 8.1 mGy) for abdominal CT (P < .0001). Both radiologists deemed image quality of and diagnostic confidence with ASIR and FBP CT images as acceptable, without any artifacts. Despite the lower radiation dose used, ASIR images (chest, 10.7 ± 2.5 [mean ± standard deviation]; abdomen, 11.8 ± 3.4) had substantially less objective noise than did FBP images (chest, 13.3 ± 3.8; abdomen, 13.8 ± 5.2) (P = .001, P =.006, respectively).
Conclusion: Use of a hybrid iterative reconstruction technique, such as ASIR, enables substantial radiation dose reduction for pediatric CT when compared with FBP and maintains image quality and diagnostic confidence.