Dual-energy CT: Basic principles and clinical applications in pulmonary diseases

Dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) is a new type of CT characterized by material decomposition using simultaneously obtained dual-energy data sets. Clinical applications in thoracic diseases mainly include the evaluation of pulmonary perfusion in pulmonary thromboembolism, ventilation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and contrast enhancement of pulmonary nodules for differentiation of malignant diseases from benign lesions. DECT is an important tool because it can provide us with additional functional information for the evaluation of various thoracic diseases, and we expect further improvement of these techniques.