New split-bolus technique of contrast agent administration in polytrauma patient used at the Department of Imaging Methods University Hospital and Medical Faculty in Pilsen
Abstract
Trauma is the main cause of death in people below the age of 45 years. Due to the age of the patient we tend to decrease the amount of the administered contrast agent along with maintenance of high image quality, and to decrease the amount of radiation dose.
We investigate the triphasic injection protocol so called "split-bolus technique", this protocol allows us to benefit from high contrast in all vascular structures and parenchymatous organs simultaneously. We compared our new protocol with standard bi-phasic protocol (data acquisition in arterial and venous phase).
Despite the statistically significant result in density of the vessel and the liver parenchyma we achieved good image quality. High image quality was achieved in the density of the other parenchymatous organs.
Now we work on other possibilities how to optimize our protocol to achieve better image quality. We are investigating the impact of the physiologic solution administration after the first bolus phase and impact of changing the volume of each of the bolus.
Next step would be increasing the flow rate of the contrast agent in last bolus phase and investigating the impact to the density achieved in the vessel structures.