Ultra-low-dose CT at 1.7 mSv replaced most ultrasound and KUB for renal stone surveillance

The edition in brief

A multidisciplinary quality improvement project introduced a tin-filter ultra-low-dose CT protocol for renal stone surveillance. Mean dose fell from 5 to 1.7 mSv against standard low-dose CT; monthly ultrasound fell by 71% and KUB radiographs from 15 to 4, with ultra-low-dose CT rising to about 44 a month, at a modest Medicare fee increase over the ultrasound-plus-KUB pair. In a prospective shadow-mode study of 3,856 brain CT angiograms, an FDA-cleared aneurysm detection tool had higher sensitivity than radiologists alone (0.846 vs 0.718) with similar specificity, surfacing 55 aneurysms radiologists missed, mostly under 3 mm; yield was highest in inpatients and unfavourable in outpatients. After a commercial pulmonary nodule AI was deployed at a Dutch tertiary centre, median chest CT reporting time fell from 21.3 to 18.2 minutes across 39,323 examinations, with the largest gains for thoracic radiologists and a 7% increase in emergency cases. A retrospective study found that adding plaque burden, remodelling index, enhancement ratio and perivascular fat density to Carotid Plaque-RADS and stenosis improved identification of symptomatic plaques (AUC 0.876; 0.919 in moderate stenosis).