Influences of Adaptive Statistical Iterative Reconstruction on Image Quality and Dose Reduction in Coronary Computed Tomography Angiography

 The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of using adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASiR) method on image quality and reduction of organ doses, effective dose, and carcinogenesis risk from coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) in 64-slice CT scan.

 This cross-sectional study was performed on two groups of patients. The first group consisted of 185 patients (90 women and 95 men; mean age: 55.65 ± 14.77 years) who underwent CCTA with the conventional filter back projection (FBP) reconstruction. The second group consisted of 172 patients (80 women and 92 men; mean age: 58.59 ± 11.22 years) who were tested using ASiR reconstruction. Organ doses, effective dose, and carcinogenic risk were compared between the groups. Moreover, image quality criteria including noise, contrast-to-noise ratio, signal-to-noise ratio, CT numbers of the left coronary artery, and left ventricle were compared between the groups.

 There were at least 40% reduction in the effective dose (11.94 ± 5.64 vs. 20.38 ± 6.84 mSv; P < 0.001) and risk of carcinogenesis (8.97 ± 4.71 vs. 16.09 ± 8.42 in 10,000 people; P < 0.001) between the FBP and AsiR methods. No significant differences were observed between image quality parameters in the two reconstruction methods (P > 0.050).

 The application of ASiR method compared to conventional FBP method can reduce the dose of organs, the effective dose, and the carcinogenic risk of CCTA without compromising the image quality.