Diagnostic imaging modalities in head and neck disease.

Background: Because of the complex anatomy of the head and neck region, conventional projection radiography alone is unreliable and carries a high risk of misdiagnosis. The poor risk-benefit ratio of conventional radiography has led to their replacement by tomographic imaging for nearly all studies in this region.

Method: This review is based on pertinent articles retrieved by a selective search in the PubMed database (January 1980 to May 2013) as well as on the relevant guidelines from Germany and abroad.

Impact of increasing levels of advanced iterative reconstruction on image quality in low-dose cardiac CT angiography.

Purpose: To investigate the effects of an advanced iterative reconstruction (IR) technique on subjective and objective image quality (IQ) in low-dose cardiac CT angiography (CCTA).

Materials And Methods: 30 datasets of prospectively triggered "step-and-shoot" CCTA scans acquired on a 256-slice CT scanner with optimized exposure settings were processed on a prototype IR system using filtered back-projection (FBP) and 4 levels of advanced IR (iDose4, Philips) providing incremental rates of IR (level 2, 4, 6, 7). In addition, the effects of different reconstruction kernels (semi-smooth [CB], standard with edge-enhancement [XCB]) and a "multi-resolution" feature [MR] to preserve the noise power spectrum were evaluated resulting in a total of n = 480 image sets.