October 2012
Characterizing Lesions — Dual-Energy CT Provides a New View in Oncology Imaging
By Dan Harvey
Radiology Today
Vol. 13 No. 10 P. 18
It’s been said that two heads are better than one. In the world of CT, two energies may prove better than one for many applications.
“Clinical benefits have been proven,” says Jakub Mochon, a CT product manager with Siemens, which developed and markets the SOMATOM Definition dual-source CT system. Dual-energy CT has become part of the daily clinical imaging routine in some facilities, proving useful for conditions such as kidney stones, gout, musculoskeletal injuries, atherosclerosis, stroke, pulmonary embolism, brain hemorrhage, and cardiovascular disease. It doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to realize how the capabilities could transfer to characterizing lesions in oncology imaging.
Dual-energy CT can be achieved with two X-ray sources and detector systems operating at different energy levels or by using one source and detector and rapidly switching between two energy levels to produces two images of the same anatomy.
“With conventional CT, we acquire one image at a time in a single energy setting on a scanner. But dual-energy CT makes it possible to acquire two images simultaneously at two different energies,” says Sunit Sebastian, MD, director of the body imaging division and an assistant professor of radiology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “That’s the overarching principle. Even though different vendors might accomplish this in different ways, they get to the same place. What excited everyone was that we could see more, and thus learn, more than with conventional CT. It has stretched the capabilities of conventional CT.”