• Posted March 18, 2025

Chest CT Scans Can Help Diagnose Pneumonia

Low-dose CT chest scans could help detect pneumonia in at-risk patients while exposing them to small amounts of radiation, a new study says.

Ultra-low-dose scans can effectively detect pneumonia in patients with compromised immune systems, helping doctors treat the infection before it becomes life-threatening, researchers reported in Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging.

The scans do so while exposing patients to just 2% of the radiation dose used in a standard CT scan, researchers said.

“This study paves the way for safer, AI-driven imaging that reduces radiation exposure while preserving diagnostic accuracy,” lead researcher Dr. Maximiliano Klug, a radiologist with the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel, said in a news release.

CT scans are the gold standard for detecting pneumonia, Klug said, but there are concerns regarding the risk posed by repeated exposure to radiation.

Ultra-low-dose CT reduces radiation exposure, but the scans can be grainy and hard to read, researchers said.

To overcome that, Klug's team developed an AI program that could help “de-noise” low-dose scans, making them sharper and easier to read.

Between September 2020 and December 2022, 54 patients with compromised immune systems who had fevers underwent a pair of chest CT scans -- a normal dose scan and an ultra-low-dose scan.

The AI program cleaned up the low-dose scan, and then both sets of images were given to a pair of radiologists for assessment.

Radiologists had 100% accuracy detecting pneumonia and other lung problems with the AI-cleaned low-dose scans, but 91% to 98% accuracy in examining the scans that hadn’t been improved through AI, results show.

“This pilot study identified infection with a fraction of the radiation dose,” Klug said. “This approach could drive larger studies and ultimately reshape clinical guidelines, making denoised ultra-low dose CT the new standard for young immunocompromised patients.”

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more about pneumonia.

SOURCE: Radiological Society of North America, news release, March 13, 2025