Optimization of Energy Level in Abdominal Organs with Single-Source Dual Energy CT

Dual energy CT (DECT) is one of the most popular imaging technologies with potential clinical applications. Since the first introduction of DECT in 2006, it has been introduced various abdominal clinical applications such as imaging of renal tumors, components of urinary stone, imaging of adrenal adenoma, evaluation of abdominal aortic aneurysm, evaluation of small intestine and liver, and imaging of pancreatic adenocarcinoma.1,2 DECT has several major advantages over traditional conventional single-source CT (CSCT) systems.3 First, arbitrary energy can be selected to obtain a virtual monochromatic energy level (keV) image. [...]of evaluating the changes of CNR and SNR for each substance inserted into the phantom, HU decreased trend with increasing keV in Adipose, Breast, Solid Water, Brain, Liver and Inner Bone which are close material to 0 of CNR and SNR, but the rate of decline was insignificant. A dataset of 80 kVp produces more noise than an image obtained at 120 kVp or 140 kVp. Because SSDE CT uses both low energy of 80 kVp and high energy of 140 kVp, it is necessary to evaluate and eliminate the noise generated in the low energy region. [...]after the injection of the contrast agent, the keV of the tissue according to the increase and decrease of the enhancement of the image obtained by the multiphase inspection was not measured and evaluated. Since the change of keV according to the injection rate of the contrast agent was applied to a total of 62 subjects, the error caused by the lack of the number of measurements cannot be excluded.