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Effectiveness of the smoothing filter in pediatric 99mTc-dimercaptosuccinic acid renal scintigraphy

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Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate whether the use of a smoothing filter would improve the image quality in pediatric 99mTc-dimercaptosuccinic acid (99mTc-DMSA) scintigraphy. We retrospectively reviewed 31 kidneys in 16 consecutive pediatric patients aged 10 months to 14 years. The administered dose was calculated using a weight-based method. Two reviewers randomly evaluated the original planar posterior images and smoothing filter image; they assessed image quality and performed defect evaluations. The evaluation of visual image quality yielded significantly better results for the smoothing filter images than for the original images. Although the smoothing filter images were slightly inferior to the original images in terms of edge sharpness, no significant difference was observed in the defect evaluation. We confirmed that 99mTc-DMSA scintigraphy with a smoothing filter yielded reduced image noise, while maintaining defect evaluation performance and improving image quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Akita Kousei Medical Center, 1-1-1 Iijima Nishibukuro, Akita, 011-0948, Japan

    Hitoshi Saito, Teruhiro Ito, Koichi Omachi & Atsushi Inugami

  2. Department of Radiological Life Sciences, Hirosaki University Graduate School of Health Science, 66-1 Hon-cho, Hirosaki, Aomori, 036-8564, Japan

    Masaru Yamaguchi, Megumi Tsushima & Ikuo Kashiwakura

  3. Department of Radiology, Mutsu General Hospital, 1-2-8 Kogawamachi, Mutsu, Aomori, 035-8601, Japan

    Yasushi Mariya

Authors
  1. Hitoshi Saito
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  2. Teruhiro Ito
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  3. Koichi Omachi
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  4. Atsushi Inugami
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Correspondence to Hitoshi Saito.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Statement of human and animal rights

This study was approved by the Ethics Committees of Hirosaki University and Akita Kousei Medical Center (Approval No. 2015-024 and No. 45). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The IRB was obtained without patients’ informed consent. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed.

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Since this study uses past inspection data, it does not conduct any new inspections. Personal information is anonymized, and do not use personal identifying information such as the name and address of the data provider. Therefore, informed consent will not be acquired. This article does not contain any studies with human participants.

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Saito, H., Ito, T., Omachi, K. et al. Effectiveness of the smoothing filter in pediatric 99mTc-dimercaptosuccinic acid renal scintigraphy. Radiol Phys Technol 13, 104–110 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12194-020-00553-8

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