Medical Physics PhD student, Taylor Smith’s presentation at the RSNA, entitled “CT Resolution, Noise, and Dose Reference Levels Across a Multi-Center Patient Population,” was recently featured on AuntMinnie website. In this presentation, Taylor discusses recent efforts, led by Dr. Ehsan Samei (Duke Radiology), in collaboration with Dr. Francesco Ria (Duke Radiology) and John Heil (Imalogix), to propose a new metric for evaluating CT radiation exposure, called Resolution Reference Level (RRL). Testing this new reference level using 10,000+ CT scans from around 100 healthcare institutions, the researchers found a large inter- and intra-facility variability in image resolution and dose reference levels. With the addition of RRL, clinics can begin to make holistic decisions regarding population-based imaging-protocol adjustments with consideration to dose, noise, and resolution.
