Enhancement and Restoring of Low Dose Abdominal CT Images by a Novel Adaptive Nonlinear 3D Post Processing Filter - a Prospective Blinded Interventional Study

Through the rapid growth of multislice Computer Tomography (CT) imaging, radiation protection has become a major issue in the radiological community. Optimizing CT scanning is a key task when keeping the radiation doses as low as reasonable achievable (the ALARA principle). Post processing filters can improve and restore grainy and noisy low dose CT images by enhancing structure and reducing image noise. In our study of 10 patients, the investigators perform a preliminary evaluation of a novel post processing filter, which does picture element correlations in all three spatial dimensions. By comparing normal dose pictures with unprocessed low-dose pictures and pictures processed with two dimentional (2D) and three dimentional (3D) filters,the investigators will be able to assess the possible clinical value of the 3D filter. This project is collaboration between Buskerud Hospital (BU), Buskerud University College, Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) and Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV). The project is part of the PhD of Lars Borgen.