Purpose: Many patients having an abnormal initial bone densitometry study h
ave had a previous abdominal/pelvic computed tomography (CT) for other clin
ical reasons. This study evaluates if a nondedicated quantitative CT (QCT)
abdominal/pelvic CT scan could be used as reliable baseline data for subseq
uent dedicated bone density studies.
Subjects and Methods: Twenty-sir: patients (13 men, 13 women) undergoing cl
inically-indicated non-i.v. and i.v. contrast abdominal/pelvic CT had dedic
ated QCT performed immediately following scans of the L1, L2, and L3 verteb
ral bodies. QCT was then performed on all three scans. A repeated measures
analysis of variance model was used to analyze the data in order to compare
noncontrast clinical CT with QCT and noncontrast clinical with contrast cl
inical CT.
Results: The mean bone mineral density for the noncontrast clinical study w
as 98.51 (mg/cc) versus 90.56 (mg/cc) for QCT (p = 0.0003; 95% confidence i
nterval: 3.90 to 13.71). There was no significant difference (p = 0.085) be
tween QCT performed from non-i.v. and i.v. contrast clinical CT scans.
Conclusion: Bone densitometry can be performed from either non-i.v. or i.v.
contrast clinical CT scans if a conversion factor is applied. This can be
determined by utilizing a formula D-average = -7.83 + (0.99 x NCaverage), w
here D-average and NCaverage are the abbreviations of "dedicated" and "nonc
ontrast clinical" BMD averaged over vertebral bodies L1-L3, respectively.