Contrast Enhancement - Video Lesson

By my account, there's about four hundred and seventeen reasons that CT is the best modality. Reason number twenty three is contrast enhancement. The general purpose of contrast enhancement in CT is literally to add visual contrast to the images being produced during the study. Contrast agents are used at different times and in different ways and for different specific indications, but their general function is always one of these things. To differentiate between normal tissues or to help differentiate between normal tissues and pathologies. Let's look at a few examples. In these two images of a patient's chest, the image on the left is without contrast. The image on the right is with contrast. The image on the left clearly shows the heart, but the different tissues inside of the heart are not well distinguished from each other. Compare that to the image on the right where the patient received intravenous contrast. The various chambers of the heart are clearly distinguished from the other heart tissue