Digital Pediatric Image Quality Phantoms and Simulations

Pediatric IQ Phantoms is a dataset of virtual phantoms and their computed tomography (CT) images for assessing the image quality of image-based CT denoising products in pediatric patients. The phantoms in the dataset enable assessment of standard measures of image quality – CT number accuracy, noise magnitude, uniformity, contrast dependent spatial resolution, and low contrast detectability. These phantoms are designed to span the range of pediatric effective waist diameters (Table 1) and thus can be used to assess pediatric image quality performance.
Table 1: Pediatric subgroups investigated defined by

Subgroup
Age Range
Waist Diameter Range

Newborn
≤ 1 mo
≤ 11.5 cm

Infant
>  1 mo & < 2 yrs
> 11.5 cm & ≤ 16.8 cm

Child
> 2 yrs & ≤ 12 yrs
> 16.8 cm & ≤ 23.2 cm

Adolescent
> 12 yrs & < 21 yrs
> 23.2 cm & < 34 cm

Adult
≥ 22 yrs
≥ 34 cm

These phantoms include:

CTP404 multi-contrast phantom: for assessing CT number accuracy and contrast-dependent spatial resolution.

CTP404 is a modified version of the sensitometry module CTP404 from the Catphan 600 phantom (The Phantom Laboratory, Salem, NY).

This cylindrical phantom has eight unique contrast inserts ranging from -1000 to +900 HU in a uniform background of 0 HU. In its standard size, CTP404 has a diameter of 150 mm with 12 mm diameter inserts. Due to the sharp intersection between the phantom background and multi-contrast inserts, this module was used to evaluate contrast-dependent image sharpness using the contrast-dependent modulation transfer function.2

MITA LCD phantom: for assessing low contrast detectability.

The MITA-LCD phantom is a cylindrical phantom filled with water-equivalent attenuation material and contains four low-contrast disk inserts of different size and contrast combinations: 3mm-14HU, 5mm-7HU, 7mm-5HU, 10mm-3HU.3,4

Uniform water phantom: for assessing noise and noise texture.

The uniform water phantom is a cylindrical phantom filled with water-equivalent attenuation material.