> One can only hope human CT scans could achieve this level of preciseness without increasing the radiation dose.

It looks like a pretty standard scan to me and the article says the protocol used is an extremity protocol.

I work in radiology and various non-human things go though the scanner from time to time - fruit, pets, fossils, broken equipment that needs internal visualisation (sort of like the patients).

Well the article says that each slice is 600 microns apart so definitely smaller than a typical human CT that I’ve worked with where each slice is at least 1 mm apart. Also, the contrast is very high which means higher radiation does per slice is needed. In human context, like others have stated in this thread, if you don’t need a higher resolution then don’t order one. But sometimes, you only know if some areas needed higher resolution after you’ve seen the result. And the radiation dose for an additional, higher resolution and smaller areas might be much greater than just capturing the original CT with higher resolution.

> Well the article says that each slice is 600 microns apart so definitely smaller than a typical human CT that I’ve worked with where each slice is at least 1 mm apart.

I’ve just checked our PACS. The extremity protocols are at .6mm, face at .75mm and spine is 1mm.

It was .6mm 10 years ago when I ran them at other sites, so I don’t think this is anything pioneering.

You possibly do the same, but we generally reconstruct thicker. 1mm acquisitions reconstructed in another plane at 1mm look a bit gross as the acquisition needs to be thinner than the recon.

The dose is not high on modern equipment.

Sorry to be such a bore but when scanning humans the images should only be good enough to make a good diagnosis. If they are better than needed, the wise thing to do is lower the radiation exposure.

Roughly how much higher is the dose required for this level of detail than that which is considered safe for humans?

As far as I can tell, it’s not higher dose.

> It was scanned on a GE Revolution CT machine. The scan was performed using technique optimized for human extremities, and employed very thin slice thickness of 600 microns.

No level of radiation exposure is safe. How much of CT radiation is considered acceptable depends on the application.

Dose response being linear no threshold is the operating assumption. Radiation hormesis may be a thing but it’s difficult to be certain at low doses.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis