Body Kernels - Siemens SOMATOM Manual

Upper Extremities

Body Kernels

• As standard kernels for body tissue studies B30s or
B40s are recommended; softer images are obtained
with B20s or B10s (extremely soft). The kernels B31s
or B41s have about the same visual sharpness as
B30s, respectively, B40s, the image appearance,
however, is more agreeable due to a "fine-grained"
noise structure; quite often, the low contrast detect-
ability is improved by using B31s, B41s instead of
B30s, B40s.
• For higher sharpness, as is required e.g. in patient
protocols for cervical spine, shoulder, extremities,
thorax, lung, the kernels B50s, B60s, B70s, B80s are
available.
• The special kernels are mostly used for "physical"
measurements with phantoms, e.g. for adjustment
procedures (S80s), for constancy and acceptance
tests (S80s, U90s), or for specification purposes
(U90s).
• For special patient protocols, S80s and U90s are cho-
sen, e.g. for osteo (S80s) and for high resolution
bone studies (U90s). We recommend using the high
resolution specification kernel U90s only with
"small" objects, like the wrist, otherwise artifacts will
occur in the images.
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