Abstract
Objectives: Thanks to its lack of allergic reactions and renal toxicity, CO2represents an alternative to iodine as a contrast medium for peripheral subtraction
angiography. Since CO2has a lower and negative contrast than iodine, postprocessing DSA and stacking are
mandatory. So, it seems that higher doses than traditional iodine angiography are
required. We addressed the dosimetric aspects of CO2angiography for two different commercial DSA-apparatus. Materials and Methods: Two different radiological suites were analyzed by recreating the same setup on
all the apparatuses: we used a PMMA slabs phantom with a MPD Barracuda dosimeter on
its side to collect all radiological parameters. Results: Results show that the irradiation parameters were left completely unchanged between
the traditional and CO2angiographic programs. Conclusions: This leads to thinking that these CO2protocols do not operate on the X-ray emission, but only differ on image manipulation.
The possibility of improvements by changing radiological parameters are still not
explored and really promising.
Keywords
Carbon dioxide contrast medium - digital subtraction angiography - X-ray spectrum