If the pitch of a scan is calculated to be greater than one, what is the result?

When the pitch of a CT scan is greater than one, it indicates that the distance the patient moves through the scanner during one full rotation of the x-ray tube is greater than the width of the collimated beam. This results in areas that are not being irradiated by the x-ray beam, leading to missing views in the scan data.

A pitch greater than one implies that there are gaps in the coverage of the anatomy being scanned because not every slice of the tissue is being captured as the scanner moves through the patient. This can produce images that lack sufficient data to accurately represent the scanned area, which may affect the diagnostic quality of the images.

In contrast, a pitch equal to one means that each slice of anatomy is covered completely without overlaps or gaps, providing optimal data acquisition. A pitch less than one typically causes overlap in the scan data, but only a greater than one pitch leads to missing views due to the scanner moving too quickly relative to the beam width.