Table 1.
Acquisition parameters. Data is shown as median (range) where appropriate.
Table 2.
Composition of the study population. Data is shown as median (range) unless marked otherwise.
Fig 1.
High-pitch CT pulmonary angiogram shown as transverse (A) and coronal (B) reconstructions in a 37-year old normal-weight male patient (effective chest diameter 29 cm) with acute bilateral pulmonary embolism (arrows). Image quality was rated as "excellent" by both readers.
Fig 2.
High-pitch CT pulmonary angiogram shown as transverse (A) and coronal (B) reconstructions in a 33-year old lean female patient (BMI 21, effective chest diameter 23 cm) with no evidence of pulmonary embolism. Image quality was rated as "excellent" by both readers.
Table 3.
The subjective overall image quality was rated as excellent, good, poor, sufficient and non-diagnostic for the central, lobar, segmental and subsegmental pulmonary arteries respectively. Results are given as absolute frequencies for both readers.
Fig 3.
High-pitch CT pulmonary angiogram shown as coronal maximum intensity projection (A), as well as transverse (B) and coronal (C) multiplanar reformats in a 63-year old obese female patient (effective chest diameter 37.3 cm) with no evidence of pulmonary embolism. Image quality was rated as "good" on the central and lobar arteries and “sufficient” in the segmental arteries by both readers.
Table 4.
Influence of Patient Size on Image Quality.
Patients with an effective chest parameter above the median of the whole cohort (27.7 cm) were compared with those ranging below that threshold. Data is shown as median (interquartile range).