Purpose or Case Report: The objective of this study was to evaluate the benefits of thin-slab maximum intensity projection (MIP) images for the detection of lung nodules in pediatric chest CT.
Methods & Materials: From July 2018 to September 2019, there were a total of 184 examinations for pediatric oncology patients in CT examinations of the chest or body performed at our hospital.
Of these, 17 CT images showed measurable lung nodules, and we retrospectively evaluated them.
These 17 CT images were obtained from 9 patients (mean age 8.0±5.6 years, range 0.4-17.5 years) ,and included repeat CT examinations for follow-up study. All patients were scanned with a 64-detector MDCT scanner (GE Medical Systems, Milwaukee, WI, USA).
Two pediatric radiologists independently read chest CT images with a slice thickness of 1.25 mm and 10-mm reconstructed MIP axial images. The number of nodules and image interpretation time (time required for reading, in seconds) were recorded.
Results: There were 54 lung nodules among all cases. There was no significant difference between the number of nodules detected with the MIP images and the 1.25-mm images (81 vs. 74; P > 0.05), and sensitivity was not significantly different (75.0% vs. 68.5%). However, MIP images took significantly less time to read (Reader 1: 75.5±29.1 seconds vs. 96.6±31.8 seconds; P < 0.05 / Reader 2: 93.8±27.5 seconds vs. 124.6±37.3 seconds; P < 0.005) .
Conclusions: Our results suggest that the time required for reading was compressed into less than 75 to 78%.[KS1] With pediatric chest CT, it was shown that 10-mm axial MIP images are superior to conventional images in terms of the interpretation time needed to detect lung nodules.