Evaluation of the 80 kVp Chest Protocol for a Strategy to Optimize CT Dose and Image Quality

The rising number of chest CT scans results in patients receiving larger doses of ionizing radiation which creates an urgent requirement to improve protocols for reducing CTDIvol and ensuring image quality. This research reviews a new scanning protocol using a 3D scanner for evaluation. To this end, two different tube voltage settings, 120 kVp and 80 kVp, were evaluated using a PMMA phantom in this investigation. The research determined image quality by evaluating uniformity and the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) alongside spatial resolution (SR). The CTDIvol measurement decreased from 10.49 ± 2.82 mGy at 120 kVp to 5.24 ± 0.93 mGy at 80 kVp which represents a 50% dose reduction that reached statistical significance (p = 0.0123). Image noise values increased by 36% after dose reduction from 8.59 ± 1.04 HU to 11.77 ± 2 HU with statistical significance (p = 0.001). The statistical evaluation found no meaningful differences in noise uniformity with a p-value of 0.0772 as well as CNR at p = 0.06 and SR at p = 0.0515. The 80 kVp protocol results in a 50% dose reduction for patients without affecting acceptable image quality standards.