COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE DIAGNOSTIC IMAGE QUALITY ASSESSMENT FOR THE CHEST COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY

The aim of the current study was to assess the physical and technical image quality parameters of the CT images obtained on low-dose chest protocols. Materials and methods. The study was performed using the ACR CT PHANTOM on the Philips Ingenuity 128 CT unit. The following parameters were selected for the assessment of image quality: Hounsfield unit accuracy, image noise, contrast to noise ratio and spatial resolution. The results of the study indicate the lack of significant differences between the selected low-dose protocols.  Additionally, the correlation between the results of the assessment of physical and technical parameters of CT  images and expert image quality evaluation was weak. That does not allow implementing the low-dose protocols  into clinical practice based solely on the assessment of the physical and technical parameters.