General Principles

Proper Patient Positioning
- Patient comfort comes first, so may be difficult at times especially in cases of casting, fracture, or uncooperation
- Allows for easier reformats
- Reduces radiation dose to the patient
Reformats
- Always include the entire field of view of the source images in the reformatted images
Soft tissue mass evaluation
- Use palpable markers to bracket the area of palpable abnormality
- Scan approximately 5 cm above and below the region of palpable abnormalit
- If study is ordered noncontrast, please check if patient can get intravenous contrast
Arthrograms
- Dilute iodinated contrast with sterile saline or water in a 50/50 ratio
Long Bone Protocol
- Includes humerus, forearm, femur, and lower leg/extremity
- Cover entire long bone in the field of view and surrounding soft tissues to the skin surface
- Axial reformats perpendicular to the long bone diaphysis
- Sagittal and coronal reformats parallel to the long bone diaphysis
- Be sure to include entire source field of view in the reformats