How low can we go? CT dose reduction in the assessment of the medial clavicular epiphysis in forensic age estimation: a prospective postmortem CT study.
Acta Radiol
; 64(6): 2126-2131, 2023 Jun.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36991329
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Projection radiography and, more recently, computed tomography (CT) play an important role in forensic age estimation. Both in terms of general criminal responsibility and government regulations concerning refugee care, it is important to differentiate correctly between youths and adults. A disadvantage of age estimation in CT is the ionizing radiation exposure.PURPOSE:
To investigate how far the CT dose can be reduced without losing diagnostic confidence in assessing the different stages of ossification of the medial clavicle. MATERIAL ANDMETHODS:
We prospectively scanned 25 postmortem cases with a fixed parameters protocol (FPP) and a care dose modulation protocol (CDMP) for different scan parameters. Two radiologists assessed the diagnostic image quality using a 5-point Likert scale. Inter-reader agreement was evaluated with Cohen's kappa. Differences in doses between FPP and CDMP were assessed with the one-tailed t-test.RESULTS:
The best combination of diagnostic image quality and lowest radiation dose was obtained using a CDMP with 100â kV and 40â mAs and an FPP with 100â kV and 30â mAs. Doses for 120â kV were significantly higher (one-tailed P < 0.001). The diagnostic image quality for 80â kV was insufficient overall.DISCUSSION:
Our results confirm that CT imaging at 100â kV allows a sufficient image quality that is diagnostic for age estimation in the ossification of the medial clavicle.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Clavicle
/
Drug Tapering
Type of study:
Guideline
/
Observational_studies
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Acta Radiol
Year:
2023
Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Switzerland