Table 1.
CT acquisition protocols.
Fig 1.
Representative axial and coronary reconstructed images of the standard dose protocol (a) and the carried out ULD protocols with 70 kV (b), 100 kV_Sn (c) and 150 kV_Sn (d).
Fig 2.
Representative axial reconstructed images, depicting each score (1 = non diagnostic image quality, 2 = severe blurring, 3 = moderate blurring, 4 = slight blurring, 5 = excellent image quality), exemplary.
a) Reference protocol (120 kV), b) ULD protocol 2 (100 kV Sn), c) ULD protocol 1 (70 kV), d) ULD protocol 2 (100, kV Sn), e) ULD protocol 1 (70 kV).
Fig 3.
Score frequency of diagnostic confidence of lung nodule detection in different ULD CT protocols (70 kV, 100 kV_Sn and 150 kV_Sn) in comparison: Total lung phantom (n = 195 nodules), upper part (n = 46 nodules), middle part (n = 74 nodules) and lower part (n = 75 nodules).
In the reference protocol with 120 kV every artificial nodule was evaluated with the highest score of 5 and therefore the mean was 5.
Table 2.
Interrater reliability (Cohen’s weighted kappa) of diagnostic confidence of lung nodule detection in different ULD CT protocols in comparison.