Electronic cleansing techniques are considered a crucial step on the path to performing routine CTC without the burden of cathartic laxatives, but current systems leave behind artifacts, generating uncertainty for the interpreting radiologist.
To address these shortcomings, the researchers developed a novel electronic cleansing (EC) method, called multimaterial EC (MUMA-EC), to minimize fecal-tagging subtraction artifacts on noncathartic ultralow-dose dual-energy CTC images, according to study author Janne Nappi, PhD.
"The method analyzes the dual-energy information by use of a state-of-the-art machine-learning method to differentiate tagged fecal materials and their partial-volume effects precisely from soft-tissue structures," he told AuntMinnie.com.
Applying the method at an average effective radiation dose of 0.75 mSv indicated that MUMA-EC yields superior accuracy over both conventional single-energy electronic cleansing and previous dual-energy electronic cleansing, providing excellent visualization of the entire colonic mucosa.
