Applicability of a clinical cardiac CT protocol in post mortem studies

Objective

Confirmation whether an optimized clinical cardiac CT scan protocol is also optimal for post mortem cardiac CT scans without iodine contrast or the reconstruction parameters should be changed.

Materials and methods

27 CT volumes (three cases for three recon- struction kernel with three different iterative reconstruction settings) were graded by six readers in order to find the optimal reconstruction parame- ters. The scans were performed on a Siemens Definition Flash CT scanner using 120 kV tube potentials.

Results

The study has shown that from the investigated options the softest cardiac kernel with the strongest iterative reconstruction were pre- ferred by the readers (I26 Safire 3).

Conclusion

The results indicate that the scan protocol which was adopted from clinical practice is applicable in forensic radiology too even though iodine contrast agent was not administered.