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Poster — Thur Eve — 42: Anti‐Scatter Grid Use for Digital Tomosynthesis: An Observer Study
Author(s) -
King JM,
Elbakri IA,
Reed M,
Wrogemann J
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.3476147
Subject(s) - tomosynthesis , digital radiography , image quality , grid , medical imaging , computed radiography , radiography , medicine , nuclear medicine , medical physics , computer science , artificial intelligence , computer vision , radiology , image (mathematics) , mammography , mathematics , geometry , cancer , breast cancer
In digital imaging, an anti‐scatter grid can be placed between the patient and digital detector to improve image contrast, but including the grid also increases the dose to the patient by 2–5 times, depending on the patient thickness. This is of particular concern in the pediatric population because children are more radiosensitive than adults. Since smaller patients produce less scatter, the grid is sometimes removed when imaging small children in order to reduce the dose. However, the default machine protocols at our institution recommend using a grid at most pediatric patient sizes for digital tomosynthesis imaging. We hypothesized that because of the image reconstruction process of tomosynthesis, the final images may be less sensitive to scatter than digital radiography (DR), in which case we should be able to remove the grid for a wide range of pediatric patient sizes without sacrificing a significant level of image quality. To test our hypothesis, we performed an image quality rating study on DR and tomosynthesis images taken with and without the grid for a variety of simulated patient thicknesses. We found that the reconstructed tomosynthesis images did not show a significant reduction in scatter sensitivity compared to DR. Our results suggested that, in general, the grid should be used for all tomosynthesis imaging where the patient thickness is greater than approximately 10 cm. Research supported by GE Healthcare.