OPTIMISATION OF ABDOMINAL CT EXAM PROTOCOLS IN OBESE PATIENTS.

Obesity is marked as a global epidemic, and the number of obese people is steadily increasing. This disease affects various aspects of health care, which also includes radiodiagnostic imaging modalities. CT exams of bariatric patients are becoming common in radiological practice and bring problems of both technical and physical nature. Obesity affects the quality of CT images, therefore, optimisation of the used CT protocols is important, which is difficult to be carried out on patients, because of the principles of radiation protection and ethical point of view. This study evaluates and compares three available CT protocols for examination of the abdomen in terms of image quality, radiation dose and scan time on two CT scanners of the manufacturer Siemens. For optimisation, an anthropomorphic phantom of the abdomen was used, which, by its size and attenuation of the used materials, suitably simulated an obese patient.