Feasibility of radiation dose reduction with iterative reconstruction in abdominopelvic CT for patients with inappropriate arm positioning - Fig 2

Multidetector CT images (A: standard-dose CT image; B-D: reduced-dose CT images) of a 45-year-old male patient with his two arms positioned on his sides. The section thickness was 3 mm. The window width and level was fixed at 350 and 50, respectively throughout the reconstructed image set. (A) The standard-dose CT image with filtered back projection (FBP) reconstruction shows the presence of beam hardening artifacts associated with the arms-down position. (B) The reduced-dose CT image with FBP reconstruction shows more prominent hypodense and hyperdense artifacts in the liver and spleen compared with (A). (C) A reduced-dose CT image with hybrid iterative reconstruction (iDose level 4) had similar or slightly less beam hardening artifacts than (A) while image quality was preserved. (D) A reduced-dose CT image with iterative model reconstruction (IMR level 3) shows less beam hardening artifacts than (A-C). However, IMR negatively affected the overall image quality due to prominent artificial texture and poor margin sharpness.