Diagnostic reference level quantities for adult chest and abdomen-pelvis CT examinations: correlation with organ doses

Insights into Imaging

Table 1 The main acquisition parameters of the examination’s protocols evaluated for each CT scanner

	SCANNER 1		SCANNER 2		SCANNER 3		SCANNER 4
	Abdomen-pelvis	Chest	Abdomen-pelvis	Chest	Abdomen-pelvis	Chest	Chest
Protocol identification	Abdomen no- contrast	Chest routine	Abdomen no-contrast	Chest routine no-contrast	Abdomen no-contrast	Chest routine	Chest parenchyma mediastinum
Tube voltage (kV)	120; 140	120; 140	120	120	120	120	120; 140
Pitch	1.375	1; 1.375	0.828	1.250	0.829–0.984⁴	0.767; 0.797	0.828–0.922⁴
Automatic tube current modulation¹	Auto + SmartmA	AutomA; Auto + SmartmA	SureExposure 3D	SureExposure 3D	ZDOM	ZDOM	ZDOM; ZDOM_ACS
Iterative reconstruction	SS50²	SS50²	AIDR 3D STD³	AIDR 3D STD³	–	–	–

¹AutomA, ZDOM and ZDOM_ACS are automatic tube current modulation modes that use corrections in the longitudinal (z) direction. Auto + SmartmA and SureExposure 3D combine longitudinal (z) and angular (xy) corrections
² SS50 means that 50% of the reconstruction were from iterative data
³Standard Iterative reconstructions (STD), which uses a standard deviation of 10 (established by the manufacture)
⁴ Pitch range