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Traditional filtered back projection (FBP) reconstruction methods have served the computed tomography (CT) community well for over 40 years. With the increased use of CT during the last decades, efforts to minimise patient exposure, while maintaining sufficient or improved image quality, have led to the development of model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) algorithms from several vendors. The usefulness of the advanced modeled iterative reconstruction (ADMIRE) (Siemens Healthineers) MBIR in abdominal CT is reviewed and its noise suppression and/or dose reduction possibilities explored. Quantitative and qualitative methods with phantom and human subjects were used. Assessment of the quality of phantom images will not always correlate positively with those of patient images, particularly at the higher strength of the ADMIRE algorithm. With few exceptions, ADMIRE Strength 3 typically allows for substantial noise reduction compared to FBP and hence to significant (≈30%) patient dose reductions. The size of the dose reductions depends on the diagnostic task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: A prerequisite for successful clinical use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is the selection of an appropriate imaging sequence. The aim of this study was to compare 2D and 3D fMRI sequences using different image quality assessment methods.Methods: Descriptive image measures, such as activation volume and temporal signal-to-noise ratio (TSNR), were compared with results from visual grading characteristics (VGC) analysis of the fMRI results.Results: Significant differences in activation volume and TSNR were not directly reflected by differences in VGC scores. The results suggest that better performance on descriptive image measures is not always an indicator of improved diagnostic quality of the fMRI results.Conclusion: In addition to descriptive image measures, it is important to include measures of diagnostic quality when comparing different fMRI data acquisition methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]