CT liver perfusion in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: can we modify acquisition protocol to reduce patient exposure?

ConclusionsDoubling the interscan time interval may considerably reduce radiation exposure from CTLP studies performed for HCC evaluation without affecting the diagnostic efficiency of perfusion maps generated with either standard or deconvolution-based mathematical model.Key Points• CT liver perfusion for HCC diagnosis/assessment is not routinely used in clinical practice mainly due to the associated high radiation exposure.• Two alternative acquisition protocols involving 18 scans of the liver were compared with the standard 35-scan protocol.• Increasing the time interval between successive scans to 3.4 s was found to preserve the accuracy of computed perfusion parameters derived with a standard or a deconvolution-based model and to reduce radiation exposure by 48.5%.
Source: European Radiology - Category: Radiology Source Type: research