SU‐E‐I‐52: Improvement in CT Contrast‐To‐Noise Ratio in Low Contrast Spherical Simulated Liver Lesions Using Iterative Reconstruction

Purpose: Contrast‐to‐Noise ratio (CNR) is one measure to assess image quality and lesion detectability for CT exams. The purpose of this study is to calculate the change in CNR between standard filtered back‐projection (FBP) and sinogram‐affirmed iterative reconstruction (SAFIRE) by using an anthropomorphic phantom with spherical simulated liver lesions. Methods: An anthropomorphic phantom with embedded spherical liver lesions was custom‐designed to assess low contrast lesion detection at different CT doses and reconstruction techniques. This phantom consists of 36 spherical lesions with 3 different sizes (5mm, 10mm, and 15mm). Each size has three different contrast levels. All spherical lesions were embedded non‐uniformly to minimize the memory bias for a concurrent human observer study. Phantom was scanned with a MDCT (Siemens Definition Flash) at 4 dose levels and images were reconstructed with both FBP and SAFIRE using strength setting 3. CNR was computed as the ratio of the difference of the mean CT number at the center of the lesion and the liver background to the standard deviation of the CT numbers from the liver background. CNR was evaluated for the each lesion size at the center slice that intersected the middle of the lesion to minimize the error from the partial volume effect. Results: Averaged across all lesion sizes and the contrast levels (vs. the liver background), the CNR improvement from FBP to SAFIRE (strength 3) was 34% ±10% (mean ± standard deviation) at 50mAs,(p<0.0001), 33%±11% at 100mAs (p<0.0002), 36% ± 9% at 150mAs (p<0.0001) and 36% ± 7% at 200mAs (p<0.0003). Noise reduction from SAFIRE contributed almost entirely to the CNR improvement. Conclusion: Iterative reconstruction (SAFIRE) improved CNR of spherical low‐contrast liver lesions, but almost entirely due to noise reduction, with little improvement in lesion contrast. The overall CNR improvement was uniform for each dose level tested. Dr. Herts and Dr. Baker are funded by Siemens Healthcare for research in the field of abdominal CT imaging.