7th CT users group meeting: 06/10/2005

The 7th meeting of the CT Users Group was held in Newcastle on 06/10/2005. The programme is shown below with links to pdf version of some of the talks.

Please note: information provided in the slides is not peer-reviewed, is for educational use only and is explicitly not to be used for sales or marketing purposes. Any of the authors can be contacted, via the CTUG if no contact information is provided in the slides, to discuss the contents.

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Meeting Programme

10:00 Dose reduction in paediatric head CT - Claire-Louise Chapple, Julie Willis, Andrea Shemilt - Newcastle General Hospital

10:20 CT optimisation - potential for concerted action - Matt Dunn - University Hospital, Nottingham

10:40 Can CR be used for CT “film” tests? - Gareth Iball - Leeds General Infirmary

11:30 CT image acquisition using flat panel detector angiography equipment - initial experiences - Julie Smyth, David Sutton - Ninewells Hospital, Dundee

11:50 An investigation into the calibration of a Multislice CT scanner for calcium mass estimation - Jennifer Poveda, Andy Rogers - Nottingham City Hospital

13:50 Automated analysis of Catphan 500 and 600 images from single and multi-slice CT scanners - Andrew Reilly, Nick Weir - Western General Hospital, Edinburgh

Over the past four years a single Catphan 500 phantom has been regularly utilised for performance testing of the various CT scanners within our health board. In particular, it is a key component of the radiotherapy CT-Sim quality assurance programme. A Catphan 600 phantom has recently been purchased, with the main differences between this and the Catphan 500 being:
an additional module consisting of bead ramps for measuring narrow slice-thicknesses for multi-slice and spiral protocols;
extra reference materials for verifying Hounsfield Unit calibration, including a water reservoir, in a slightly different geometrical configuration from the Catphan 500;
two small impulse beads for assessing both in-slice modulation transfer function (MTF) and slice sensitivity profiles, one embedded in the spatial resolution module and the other offset longitudinally from this.
A comparison study was performed to determine whether the two phantoms could be utilised interchangeably. The additional features of the Catphan 600 were also investigated. The phantoms were scanned on single and multi-slice scanners and both axial and spiral protocols were considered.
Software was written to automatically analyse the Catphan images and examine the following parameters:
Slice thickness, measured by plate and bead ramps;
Hounsfield Unit calibration;
Slice sensitivity profiles, determined from the impulse beads;
Spatial resolution, in terms of the point spread function (PSF) and MTF, calculated for small and large field of view images of the impulse beads;
Uniformity, in terms of index of uniformity, noise power spectrum (NPS) and the plotting of profiles through the uniformity module.
Although it was concluded that the two phantoms could effectively be used interchangeably some interesting differences were found between the two. These will be discussed at the meeting.

14:10 Comparison of assessment techniques for CT scanner spatial resolution measurement - Nick Keat - ImPACT, London

14:30 MSCT - has the time come to automate image analysis? - Elly Castellano - Royal Marsden, London

14:50 Optimisation experiences in and around Leeds - Shaun Beggs, Gareth Iball - Leeds General Infirmary

Round table discussion

15:40 Getting a quart into a pint pot - David Rawlings - Newcastle General Hospital