Relationships between Size-specific Dose Estimate and Signal to Noise Ratio under Chest CT Examinations with Tube Current Modulation

Tian Qin; Jing Wang; Mengting Wang; Ye Gu; Zongyu Xie; Baohui Liang

doi:10.2174/0115734056267251231121064259

Relationships between Size-specific Dose Estimate and Signal to Noise Ratio under Chest CT Examinations with Tube Current Modulation

Curr Med Imaging. 2024 Feb 21. doi: 10.2174/0115734056267251231121064259. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Tian Qin¹, Jing Wang¹, Mengting Wang¹, Ye Gu¹, Zongyu Xie², Baohui Liang¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Medical Imaging, Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, China.
² The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, No. 287 Changhuai Road, Bengbu, Anhui 233004, China.

PMID: 38477205
DOI: 10.2174/0115734056267251231121064259

Abstract

Purpose: Exploring the relationship between the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of organs and size-specific dose estimate (SSDE) in tube current modulation (TCM) chest CT examination.

Methods: Forty patients who received TCM chest CT scanning were retrospectively collected and divided into four groups according to the tube voltage and sexes. We chose to set up the region of interest (ROI) at the tracheal bifurcation and its upper and lower parts in slice images of the heart, aorta, lungs, paracranial muscles, and female breast, and the SNR of each organ was calculated. We also calculated the corresponding axial volume CT dose index (CTDIvolz) and axial size-specific dose estimate (SSDEz).

Results: The correlation analysis showed that the correlation between the SNR of the slice images of most organs and SSDEz was more significant than 0.8, and that between the SNR and CTDIvol was more significant than 0.7. The simple linear regression analysis results showed that when the sex is the same, the SNR of the same organ at 100kVp was higher than 120kVp, except for the lung. In multiple regression analysis, the result indicated that the determination coefficients of the SNR and SSDEz of the four groups were 0.934, 0.971, 0.905, and 0.709, respectively.

Conclusion: In chest CT examinations with TCM, the correlation between the SNR of each organ in slice images and SSDEz was better than that of CTDIvolz. And when the SSDEz was the same, the SNR at 100 kVp was better than that at 120 kVp.

Keywords: Automatic tube current modulation; Chest computed tomography (CT); ROI.; Signal-tonoise ratio; Size-specific dose estimate; Volume CT dose index.