Keywords:
Computer applications, Computer Applications-General
Authors:
M. A. Mazzei, A. Picone, P. Sacco, G. Cevenini, F. La Sala, S. Fatighenti, L. Volterrani; Siena/IT
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2010/C-1116
Purpose
1. The evaluation of the rate of growth of pulmonary nodules through “doubling time” is an important parameter to distinguish between benign and malignant lesions and to estimate the response to antiblastic therapy of pulmonary metastases.
2. Literature of last years confirmed the superiority of three-dimensional volumetric measures respect to bi-dimensional ones (based on measurement of maximum diameter or maximum sectional area of the lesion) [references 1-4]. By this, there was an implementation of dedicated automated or semi-automated segmentation softwares, that improved the work of the radiologists and increased inter/intra-observer-agreement, but has also produced lots of open questions about the variability of volume measurements related to patient characteristics, nodule characteristics and technical parameters [references 5-14].
3. The purpose of this study is to evaluate “in vivo” variability of computer aided volumetry of pulmonary nodules considering various image reconstruction parameters (slice thickness, reconstruction algorithm, FOV) and effect of intravenous contrast medium, in order to find a useful protocol of study to obtain a good reproducibility of the volumetric evaluations during follow-up.