Imaging Artifacts: A Pictorial Review

Learning Objectives Quality control in Nuclear Medicine and Radiology is of utmost importance and so is the awareness of these artifacts. If not recognized and appropriately corrected, may result in misdiagnosis. The purpose of this exhibit is to improve detection and understanding of these image based artifacts and thus improve patient care and outcomes. We present a modality based pictorial review of commonly seen imaging artifacts.

Nuclear (including PET): Photomultiplier tube, cobalt peak, radiotracer extravasation, urine contamination, patient motion, body habitus, radiochemical impurity, post treatment artifacts, star artifact, metallic artifacts, photon attenuation, artifacts in nuclear cardiology and a whole spectrum of PET CT artifacts CT: Beam hardening, partial volume, photon starvation, undersampling, metallic materials, patient motion, multiplanar & 3 D reformation (Stair Step and Zebra artifacts) MRI: chemical shift artifacts, aliasing, black boundary artifacts, truncation artifacts, zipper artifacts, phase-encoded motion artifacts, entry slice phenomenon, slice-overlap artifacts, magic angle effects, moire fringes, RF overflow artifacts, central point artifact, susceptibility artifacts, zebra artifact. Ultrasound: beam width, side lobe, reverberation, comet tail, ring-down, mirror image, refraction, attenuation, shadowing, increased through transmission and twinkle artifacts.

Research Support None