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Traditional filtered back projection (FBP) reconstruction methods have served the computed tomography (CT) community wellfor over 40 years. With the increased use of CT during the last decades, efforts to minimise patient exposure, while maintainingsufficient or improved image quality, have led to the development of model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) algorithms fromseveral vendors. The usefulness of the advanced modeled iterative reconstruction (ADMIRE) (Siemens Healthineers) MBIR inabdominal CT is reviewed and its noise suppression and/or dose reduction possibilities explored. Quantitative and qualitativemethods with phantom and human subjects were used. Assessment of the quality of phantom images will not always correlatepositively 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%) patientdose reductions. The size of the dose reductions depends on the diagnostic task., Funding: This work was supported by ALF-(LiO-602731,LIO-697941), FoU-(LIO-724631, LIO-620341) andRFoU- grants from Region Östergötland and theMedical Faculty at Linköping University.

Purpose: To determine the effect of tube load, model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) strength and slice thickness in abdominal CT using visual comparison of multi-planar reconstruction images. Method: Five image criteria were assessed independently by four radiologists on two data sets at 42- and 98-mAs tube loads for 25 patients examined on a 192-slice dual-source CT scanner. Effect of tube load, MBIR strength, slice thickness and potential dose reduction was estimated with Visual Grading Regression (VGR). Objective image quality was determined by measuring noise (SD), contrast-to-noise (CNR) ratio and noise-power spectra (NPS). Results: Comparing 42- and 98-mAs tube loads, improved image quality was observed as a strong effect of log tube load regardless of MBIR strength (p < 0.001). Comparing strength 5 to 3, better image quality was obtained for two criteria (p < 0.01), but inferior for liver parenchyma and overall image quality. Image quality was significantly better for slice thicknesses of 2mm and 3mm compared to 1mm, with potential dose reductions between 24%-41%. As expected, with decrease in slice thickness and algorithm strength, the noise power and SD (HU-values) increased, while the CNR decreased. Conclusion: Increasing slice thickness from 1 mm to 2 mm or 3 mm allows for a possible dose reduction. MBIR strength 5 shows improved image quality for three out of five criteria for 1 mm slice thickness. Increasing MBIR strength from 3 to 5 has diverse effects on image quality. Our findings do not support a general recommendation to replace strength 3 by strength 5 in clinical abdominal CT protocols. However, strength 5 may be used in task-based protocols., QC 20200117