Wide-volume versus helical acquisition in unenhanced chest CT: prospective intra-patient comparison of diagnostic accuracy and radiation dose in an ultra-low-dose setting.

Objectives: Diagnostic performance and potential radiation dose reduction of wide-area detector CT sequential acquisition ("wide-volume" acquisition (WV)) in unenhanced chest examination are unknown. This study aims to assess the image quality, the diagnostic performance, and the radiation dose reduction of WV mode compared with the classical helical acquisition for lung parenchyma analysis in an ultra-low-dose (ULD) protocol.

Methods: After Institutional Review Board Approval and written informed consent, 64 patients (72% men; 67.