Pectus excavatum is the most common chest wall deformity, often causing psychosocial distress and cardiopulmonary issues when severe. The Haller Index (HI) obtained on CT remains the standard for assessing severity, despite its limitations and reproducibility on radiograph. Photon-counting detector CTs can reduce radiation dose while maintaining image quality. We hypothesize that significantly lowering radiation will not compromise presurgical evaluation of pectus excavatum. Read More

Meeting name: SPR 2026 Annual Meeting , 2026

Authors: Cao Joseph, Kuchibhatla Maragatha, Janos Sara, Gupta Ananya, Bache Steve, Solomon Justin, Kilpatrick Kayla, Fadell Michael, Gaca Ana, Maxfield Charles, Carrico Caroline

Keywords: Chest Computed Tomography (CT), Surgical Planning, Radiation Reduction

Patients with congenital cardiac disease are a vulnerable population who require early and repeat CT imaging. However, decreasing ionizing radiation dose in pediatric CT increases image noise. We evaluated a self-supervised deep learning denoising model integrating sparse coding with a modified Vision Transformer (SC-mViT) compared with a non-local means (NLM) algorithm using quantitative and qualitative metrics. Read More

Meeting name: SPR 2026 Annual Meeting , 2026

Authors: Gupta Ananya, Erkanli Alaattin, Badea Cristian, Cao Joseph, Clark Darin, Solomon Justin, Bache Steve, Janos Sara, Fadell Michael, Gaca Ana, Carrico Caroline, Morrison Samantha

Keywords: Congenital Heart, Artificial Intelligence, CT