Tuesday, November 29 | 9:00 a.m.-9:10 a.m. | RC313-03 | Room N228
Squirming children are a constant concern in the CT suite, but researchers from Lille, France, scanned more than 300 children with a low-dose free-breathing protocol that delivered excellent image quality.The study included children younger than 5 years of age (mean, 14 months) who had either a contrast-enhanced (n = 240) or noncontrast CT (n = 103) on a third-generation dual-source CT scanner. The scans were carried out without sedation while the patients breathed freely -- in a scan that lasted a mean 0.23 seconds. In addition, a pediatric nurse practitioner was present to help calm the patients.
Nearly all patients (96%) had either no motion artifact over the length of the thorax or motion artifact that did not affect the diagnoses, the researchers said. Scans were nondiagnostic due to motion artifacts in fewer than 4% of patients, and after a second scan using the same protocol, only one patient remained with a nondiagnostic scan.
"High-quality chest CT angiography can be routinely obtained in freely breathing infants and young children when evaluated with high-temporal resolution, making sedation and anesthesia unnecessary," Dr. Martine Rémy-Jardin, PhD, head of thoracic imaging in Calmette Hospital, wrote in an email to AuntMinnie.com. "Diagnostic image quality is obtained with a single examination in 96.2% of children scanned while freely breathing."
![Axial images from unenhanced calcium score cardiac CT (left) and curved planar reformation images from CT angiography (right) show that higher long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with greater coronary artery calcium and more obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD). Top row: Images in a 68-year-old male patient with higher 10-year mean ambient air pollution exposure (7.9 μg/m3 for particulate matter measuring ≤2.5 μm in diameter [PM2.5] and 17.4 parts per billion [ppb] for NO2) with extensive CAD (coronary artery calcium score [CACS] >1,000 and obstructive CAD [≥70% diameter stenosis]). Bottom row: Images in a 57-year-old female patient with lower 10-year mean ambient air pollution exposure (6.3 μg/m3 for PM2.5 and 4.6 ppb for NO2) with no CAD (CACS = 0 and no obstructive stenosis).](https://img.auntminnie.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/06/hanneman.r6SMLzkezo.png?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
