With patient safety top of mind these days, radiology professionals are correct to focus on performing CT scans with less radiation. To that end, three recently published research studies highlight new protocols to do just that.
Radiation safety has been one of the top radiology stories in 2025 following several studies underscoring the links between medical radiation and cancer.
- The irony is that patient radiation exposure can be reduced dramatically using protocols that already exist – it’s just a matter of applying them consistently in the real world.
In the first paper, published in European Journal of Radiology, researchers share their MINDS-CAD protocol for coronary CT angiography.
- MINDS-CAD relies on tailoring contrast dose to patient weight and CT scanner tube voltage using a five-step process.
MINDS-CAD was tested with 112 obese patients getting clinically indicated CCTA with Siemens Healthineers’ Somatom Force dual-source CT scanner and Bayer’s Ultravist 370 contrast agent. Researchers found that compared to a conventional tube voltage-adapted protocol, MINDS-CAD…
- Achieved superior image quality according to cases rated “good” or “excellent” (86% vs. 75%).
- Generated fewer poor-quality scans (3.5% vs. 8.8%).
- Produced sharply lower radiation dose (99 vs. 386 mGy•cm).
- Saw no link between vascular attenuation and BMI or tube voltage.
In a second EJR paper, researchers from India tested the ability of an AI-based reconstruction algorithm to reduce dose in cerebral CTA exams.
- They used Philips’ Precise Image AI-based reconstruction protocol, which produces images resembling traditional filtered back projection scans while reducing noise like advanced iterative reconstruction methods.
In tests with 68 patients who got cerebral CTA at 100 kVp, compared to iterative reconstruction, Precise Image…
- Improved contrast-to-noise ratio 26%, signal-to-noise ratio 22%, and visual noise 16%.
- Generated higher image quality scores from radiologists.
- Generated an extremely low median effective dose of 0.785 mSv.
Finally, a third study – this one in Clinical Radiology – used a “double low” technique of low-energy 50 keV images on GE HealthCare’s Revolution Apex dual-energy CT scanner with TrueFidelity deep learning image reconstruction on 60 patients with cirrhotic liver disease.
- Compared with a conventional protocol, the double-low technique had 48% lower radiation entrance dose (4.10 vs. 7.88 mSv) and 32% lower contrast dose (67.3 vs. 99.1 mL), while image quality was rated higher.
The Takeaway
Taken together, the new papers show that radiology’s radiation dose challenge is eminently solvable thanks to the ingenuity of clinicians and researchers who are pioneering new ways to scan.