The impact of pitch values on image quality and radiation dose in an abdominal adult phantom using CT

Purpose: To identify the impact of different pitch values on image quality and effective radiation dose for axial and coronal plane in abdominal adult CT. Methods and materials: Three scans were conducted on an abdominal phantom using a Toshiba Aquilion 16-slice CT scanner with three different pitch values: standard (0.938), detail (0.688) and fast (1.438). Slices were taken from the upper, middle and lower abdomen in the axial plane and anterior, middle and posterior in the coronal plane. The six different anatomical structures were liver, intrahepatic vessels, spleen, pancreas, kidneys and renal vessels, retroperitoneum, aorta and vena cava. A two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) method was used to evaluate images for each pitch with 8 observers using a 3-point Likert scale. SNR was calculated in every plane, slice and pitch factor using the ImageJ software. To estimate effective radiation dose the CT Expo software was used. Results: Detail pitch factor provides superior image quality compared to standard in axial plane when evaluating the liver (p