Introduction: The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the effect of tube tension reduction on image contrast and image quality in pediatric temporal bone computed tomography (CT).
Methods: Seven lamb heads with infant-equivalent sizes were scanned repeatedly, using four tube tensions from 140 to 80 kV while the CT-Dose Index (CTDI) was held constant. Scanning was repeated with four CTDI values from 30 to 3 mGy. Image contrast was calculated for the middle ear as the Hounsfield unit (HU) difference between bone and air and for the inner ear as the HU difference between bone and fluid. The influence of tube tension on high-contrast detail delineation was evaluated using a phantom. The subjective image quality of eight middle and inner ear structures was assessed using a 4-point scale (scores 1-2 = insufficient; scores 3-4 = sufficient).
Results: Middle and inner ear contrast showed a near linear increase with tube tension reduction (r = -0.94/-0.88) and was highest at 80 kV. Tube tension had no influence on spatial resolution. Subjective image quality analysis showed significantly better scoring at lower tube tensions, with highest image quality at 80 kV. However, image quality improvement was most relevant for low-dose scans.
Conclusions: Image contrast in the temporal bone is significantly higher at low tube tensions, leading to a better subjective image quality. Highest contrast and best quality were found at 80 kV. This image quality improvement might be utilized to further reduce the radiation dose in pediatric low-dose CT protocols.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00234-011-0961-0 | DOI Listing |
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December 2024
School of Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, Life Sciences Building 85, University Road, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
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December 2024
Center for Drug Discovery, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Shizuoka, Suruga-ku, Shizuoka, 422-8526, Shizuoka, Japan.
The cell painting assay is useful for understanding cellular phenotypic changes and drug effects. To identify other aspects of well-known chemicals, we screened 258 compounds with the cell painting assay and focused on a mitochondrial punctate phenotype seen with disulfiram. To elucidate the reason for this punctate phenotype, we looked for clues by examining staining steps and gene knockdown as well as examining protein solubility and comparing cell lines.
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December 2024
College of Electrical Engineering, Northeast Electric Power University, Jilin, 132012, China.
The scattering of tiny particles in the atmosphere causes a haze effect on remote sensing images captured by satellites and similar devices, significantly disrupting subsequent image recognition and classification. A generative adversarial network named TRPC-GAN with texture recovery and physical constraints is proposed to mitigate this impact. This network not only effectively removes haze but also better preserves the texture information of the original remote sensing image, thereby enhancing the visual quality of the dehazed image.
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December 2024
Department of Radiology, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan.
Cine-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to track respiratory-induced motion of the liver and tumor and assist in the accurate delineation of tumor volume. Recent developments in compressed sensitivity encoding (SENSE; CS) have accelerated temporal resolution while maintaining contrast resolution. This study aimed to develop and assess hepatobiliary phase (HBP) cine-MRI scans using CS.
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December 2024
Department of Artificial Intelligence Convergence, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, 61186, Republic of Korea.
Polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) measures the polarization state of backscattered light from tissues and provides valuable insights into the birefringence properties of biological tissues. Contrastive unpaired translation (CUT) was used in this study to generate a synthetic PS-OCT image from a single OCT image. The challenges related to extensive data requirements relying on labeled datasets using only pixel-wise correlations that make it difficult to efficiently regenerate the periodic patterns observed in PS-OCT images were addressed.
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