A dramatic shift in R&D toward patient safety has taken place in the CT industry, a shift most clearly seen in efforts to reduce patient radiation dose. Iterative reconstruction algorithms are a prominent fixture at the ISCT meeting this year, as they and their future development are increasingly seen as providing the means to cut dose, while maintaining or even boosting image quality.

In the wake of the slice wars, which saw CT scanners boom from four to 320 slices, a new battle will be fought, one focused on energy and spectral imaging. Photon counting, triple- and quad-energy systems, and a new breed of contrast agents are emerging drivers in the development of spectral CT, say some experts in topics scheduled for the Tuesday, May 18, ISCT session on Dual Energy and Spectral Imaging.

Fears that revenues last year from the sale of new CTs in the U.S. would slide to levels not seen in a long time proved to be well founded, as the industry suffered its worst year in more than a decade.

Much is known about dose reduction and adult patients, but what about kids? The literature is scant, but that doesn’t mean solutions don’t exist, according to a presenter at the International Society for Computed Tomography conference May 21.

Clinical studies examining the potential of CT exposure to cause cancer are under way, but it could be years or even a decade until the results are known. Even then, they may be inconclusive, say expert presenters at the ISCT symposium on MDCT.

While most physicians rely on serum creatinine levels to determine kidney function, it’s not the most reliable indicator, according to a nephrologist who presented at the International Society for Computed Tomography on May 18. Instead, he suggested providers look at the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). In acutely ill patients in particular look at the changing serum creatinine (sCR) levels and not the specific values or specific eGFRs, he said.

GE Healthcare jumped ahead of competitors in the race to cut patient dose with the commercial release in 2008 of its Adaptive Statistical Iterative Reconstruction (ASIR), the first software to clean up CT images and, in the process, allow dramatic reductions -- up to 50% -- in patient radiation dose. In the first day of this year’s ISCT symposium, iterative reconstruction was hailed repeatedly as the leading solution to the hottest issue in CT patient safety.

TeraRecon’s “iNtuition Cloud” debuted as a commercially available product May 18 at the ISCT symposium. The newly available system is the company’s flagship iNutition solution in “Software as a Service” form.

While some may ask whether the CT community should transition to low kV, Willi A. Kalender, Ph.D., a professor in the Institute of Medical Physics at the University of Erlangen, in Germany, asks why not.

Iterative reconstruction algorithms will have a “profound effect” on CT as the enabling technology for advances in image quality and patient safety, said Stanford radiology professor Geoffrey Rubin at the ISCT symposium on multidetector row CT.