Model-based Iterative Reconstruction (MB-IR VEOTM) in Ultra Low-dose Abdominal CT Versus Adaptative Statistical Iterative Reconstruction (ASIR): A Prospective Study for Acute Renal Colic

Renal colic is a common recurrent pathology in young patients, multi explored by imaging such as CT and abdominal radiography.

Abdominal MDCT(MultiDetector Computed Tomography) without injection is the gold standard in diagnosis of acute flank pain suspect of renal colic due to high sensitivity (96%) and excellent specificity (100%).

The increased use of medical imaging examinations using ionizing radiation (+57 % between 2002 and 2007) makes it essential to optimize protocols, including CT-scans which represents 10.1 % of procedures and 58 % of the collective effective dose.

Model-based iterative reconstruction (MB-IR VEOTM) (GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, WI) can use a low dose acquisition, reducing the effective dose delivered to the patient almost 80% comparing a standard CT with the last algorithm: adaptative statistical iterative reconstruction (ASIR).

MB-IR VEOTM shows great potential for substantially reducing radiation doses at routine abdominal CT. ASIR is limited in this regard owing to reduced image quality and diagnostic capability. Further investigation is needed to determine the optimal dose level for MBIR(Model Base Iterative Reconstruction) that maintains adequate diagnostic performance. In general, objective and subjective image quality measurements do not necessarily correlate with diagnostic performance at ultralow-dose CT.