Computed tomography working principle and its application to diagnose adult and pediatric COVID-19 patients

Abstract

Along with the increasing number of COVID-19 cases around the world, new forms of prevention, diagnosis and treatment for this disease have been widely studied globally. As the virus primarily attacks the respiratory system, computed tomography of the chest (lungs) has played an important role mainly:in the detection of pneumonia in patients with high suspicion (not yet confirmed by laboratory; in the magnitude of the evaluation of pneumonia; and in the monitoring of the respiratory condition (pneumonia) evolution in adult and pediatric patients with laboratory studies that confirm the disease. In this scenario, computed tomography (CT) has proven to be an important ally for health professionals in addition to pediatric and adult patients, since the results can help make a timely decision on the clinical direction to follow. This review paper demonstrated deeply the physical mechanism of CT machine. Moreover, in this review paper, studies have shown that in adult and pediatric patients with laboratory evidence of COVID-19, CT images showed lung lesions with very specific features.