Influence of a longitudinal motion on image quality with a 64-channel CT scanner

Physiologic motions can appear during a computed tomography (CT) exam. Even if some motions can be prevented, others are unavoidable. To tempt to correct the resulting artifacts, it is necessary to understand their apparition and their influence on the image quality. By using an anthropomorphic phantom and a dynamic platform, we have studied the influence of three different linear speeds on the quality of CT axial images. The results proved that the deformation, the detectability and the contrast of calcifications are of course dependent on the size and on the density of the calcification but also on the movement applied to them. The influence of the motion on the image quality depends on the studied object and cannot be predicted.