Question

Increasing slice thickness will do what to partial volume artifacts?

1) Increase the visibility of partial volume artifacts
2) Decrease the visibility of partial volume artifacts
3) Have no effect on partial volume artifacts
4) Cannot be determined

Answer 1

Increasing the slice thickness in medical imaging, particularly in CT scans, will increase the visibility of partial volume artifacts as it causes a single voxel to contain multiple different tissue densities.

Step-by-step explanation:

In medical imaging, particularly in computed tomography (CT), the term slice thickness refers to the width of the imaging plane that is captured on each scan. Increasing the slice thickness will increase the visibility of partial volume artifacts. Partial volume artifacts occur when multiple tissue types, and thus differing attenuation values, are included within a single voxel, which is the three-dimensional equivalent of a pixel. A thicker slice integrates over a larger volume, therefore increasing the chance that a single voxel within the slice contains multiple different tissue densities, which results in a less accurate representation, or artifact, in the final image. In contrast, a thinner slice reduces the likelihood of this occurring, because it represents a smaller volume per voxel, and thus more closely approximates a single tissue type per voxel.