Background: Frequent chest CTs within a short period during follow-up of long COVID patients may increase the risk of radiation-related health effects in the exposed individuals. We aimed to assess the image quality and diagnostic accuracy of ultra-low-dose CT (ULDCT) chest compared to standard-dose CT (SDCT) in detecting lung abnormalities associated with long COVID.
Methods: In this prospective study, 100 long COVID patients with respiratory dysfunction underwent SDCT and ULDCT chest that were compared in terms of objective (signal-to-noise ratio, SNR) and subjective image quality (image graininess, sharpness, artifacts, and diagnostic accuracy along with the European guidelines on image quality criteria for CT chest), detection of imaging patterns of long COVID, CT severity score, and effective radiation dose.