Prospective vs. Retrospective - Video Lesson

Welcome back. This lesson is on prospective and retrospective reconstruction in CT. In CT, these terms have some very specific meanings. Prospective reconstruction refers to image series initiated before you actually scan the patient. For example, you will always set up standard and lung reconstructions as a part of every CT chest that you'll ever do. And you set these up before you actually initiate the helical scan. Retrospective reconstruction is different because these images are initiated after the scan is over. For example, it's common in trauma patients to retrospectively reconstruct the thoracic spine after scanning the chest. In many cases, the technologist doesn't even know that the thoracic spine needs to be reconstructed, and so this reconstruct isn't set up at the beginning of the scan. The thoracic spine data is there. It just needs to be reconstructed with a smaller display field of view