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SU‐C‐12A‐03: The Impact of Contrast Medium On Radiation Dose in CT: A Systematic Evaluation Across 58 Patient Models
Author(s) -
Sahbaee P,
Samei E,
Segars W
Publication year - 2014
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 - 10.1118/1.4887851
Subject(s) - monte carlo method , imaging phantom , nuclear medicine , dosimetry , medicine , image quality , contrast (vision) , kerma , radiation dose , effective dose (radiation) , medical physics , computer science , mathematics , statistics , artificial intelligence , image (mathematics)
Purpose: To assess the effect of contrast medium on radiation dose as a function of time via Monte Carlo simulation from the liver CT scan across a library of 5D XCAT models Methods: A validated Monte Carlo simulation package (PENELOPE) was employed to model a CT system (LightSpeed 64 VCT, GE Healthcare). The radiation dose was estimated from a common abdomen CT examination. The dose estimation was performed on a library of adult extended cardiac‐torso (5D XCAT) phantoms (35 male, 23 female, mean age 51.5 years, mean weight 80.2 kg). The 5D XCAT models were created based on patient‐specific iodine concentration‐time results from our computational contrast medium propagation model for different intravenous injection protocols. To enable a dynamic estimation of radiation dose, each organ in the model was assigned to its own time‐concentration curve via the PENELOPE package, material.exe. Using the Monte Carlo, for each scan time point after the injection, 80 million photons were initiated and tracked through the phantoms. Finally, the dose to the liver was tallied from the deposited energy. Results: Monte Carlo simulation results of radiation dose delivered to the liver from the XCAT models indicated up to 30% increase in dose for different time after the administration of contrast medium. Conclusion: The contrast enhancement is employed in over 60% of imaging modalities, which not only remarkably affects the CT image quality, but also increases the radiation dose by as much as 70%. The postinjection multiple acquisition in several enhanced CT protocols, makes the radiation dose increment through the use of contrast medium, an inevitable factor in optimization of these protocols. The relationship between radiation dose and injected contrast medium as a function of time studied in this work allows optimization of contrast administration for vulnerable individuals.