Radiation dose reduction for coronary artery calcium scoring at 320-detector CT with adaptive iterative dose reduction 3D

To assess the possibility of reducing the radiation dose for coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring by using adaptive iterative dose reduction 3D (AIDR 3D) on a 320-detector CT scanner. Fifty-four patients underwent routine- and low-dose CT for CAC scoring. Low-dose CT was performed at one-third of the tube current used for routine-dose CT. Routine-dose CT was reconstructed with filtered back projection (FBP) and low-dose CT was reconstructed with AIDR 3D. We compared the calculated Agatston-, volume-, and mass scores of these images. The overall percentage difference in the Agatston-, volume-, and mass scores between routine- and low-dose CT studies was 15.9, 11.6, and 12.6 %, respectively. There were no significant differences in the routine- and low-dose CT studies irrespective of the scoring algorithms applied. The CAC measurements of both imaging modalities were highly correlated with respect to the Agatston- (r = 0.996), volume- (r = 0.996), and mass score (r = 0.997; p < 0.001, all); the Bland-Altman limits of agreement scores were -37.4 to 51.4, -31.2 to 36.4 and -30.3 to 40.9 %, respectively, suggesting that AIDR 3D was a good alternative for FBP. The mean effective radiation dose for routine- and low-dose CT was 2.2 and 0.7 mSv, respectively. The use of AIDR 3D made it possible to reduce the radiation dose by 67 % for CAC scoring without impairing the quantification of coronary calcification.