Dear CT Insider,
New data about purchasing trends suggest that the CT market in Western Europe is stabilizing at 64 slices. Whereas system developers have focused much of their recent efforts on 128-, 256-, and even 320-slice machines, it seems most users are quite happy with 64-slice units.
In 2010, 64-slice equipment accounted for nearly 36% of total CT units sold in Western Europe, and this looks set to grow to 48.6% by 2015. The comparable annual figures for units with more than 64 slices are 12.8% and 18.1%. Click here for the story or visit our CT Digital Community.
High-end systems have their supporters, however. Radiologists at Berlin's Charité Medical University have shown that a 320-detector-row scanner can facilitate single-heartbeat imaging, which means that patients receive five times the anatomical coverage compared with scans with a 64-slice unit. Single-beat cardiac CT can lead to dose reduction, more accuracy, and greater flexibility in imaging patients with arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation, and shortness of breath. For details, click here.
CT has become increasingly popular for guiding interventional procedures, but these scans may be packing more dose than necessary. Researchers in China have found a way to cut the radiation dose by eliminating the need to perform multiple scans of the same area. To find out more, click here.
Imaging plays a growing role in gunshot injuries, and CT is leading the way in this area. In one case of a 30-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the head, the fragmentation and scatter of the bullet was best seen on CT bone windows. Click here for our report.
The Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) met in Denver, Colorado, last month, and physicians from Singapore used the congress to demonstrate how they are evaluating stent patency using extremely low radiation doses with the aid of dual-source multidetector-row CT. Click here to read more.
