The findings of this study are potentially of use for designing imaging protocols for the BGO-PET/CT system when using commercially available FDG. It is easy to obtain good image quality for patients of low to average body size with the standard injection dose. However, large patients should be injected, wherever possible, with an FDG dose of up to 5 MBq/kg. The acquisition time in overweight and obese patients should be as longer as possible than in standard weight patients.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the best phantom for calculating the becquerel calibration factor (BCF) and correction method to obtain the improvement of standardized uptake value (SUV) accuracy in both single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and SPECT/CT. Method: A SPECT/CT scanner was used in this study. BCFs were calculated using four phantoms with different cross sections including National Electrical Manufacturers Association International Electrotechnical Commission body phantom (NEMA IEC body phantom) filled with 99m TcO4 -, and five correction methods were used for reconstruction. SUVs were calculated by the NEMA IEC body phantom and pediatric phantom in house with these BCFs. We then measured SUVmean in the background region of the NEMA IEC body phantom, SUVmax and SUVpeak of the 37-mm-diameter sphere. Results: In the SPECT scanner, SUVmean and SUVmax measured 1.04 and 4.02, respectively, in the case of BCF calculation and SUV measurement using NEMA IEC body phantoms without corrections. In the SPECT/CT scanner, SUVmean with CT attenuation correction (AC) was in agreement with the theoretical values using each phantom. SUVmax showed the same trend. Conclusion: In the SPECT scanner, it is possible to obtain a highly accurate SUV by using a phantom that matches the size of the subject for BCF calculation and without correction. In the SPECT/CT scanner, highly accurate SUVs can be obtained by using CT-based attenuation correction, and these values do not depend on the size of the BCF calculation phantom.

SummaryPurpose: The aim of this study was to validate the reliability of dose calibrators for measuring the radioactivity of several radioisotopes in multi-institution. Methods: We evaluated the measurement accuracy of dose calibrators using a commercially available source ( 67 Ga, 99m Tc, 123 I, 201 TL) . Nine dose calibrators (five models) in seven institutions were performed in this study. Each source was measured at least 3 times a day over a period of 4 halflife. Linearity of concentration (%error value) and percent difference values (%diff measurement) between measured and estimated radioactivity were calculated to evaluate the measurement accuracy. In addition, difference among institutions (%diff institution) was evaluated by the error values between measured and reference institution values. Results: Good linearity of concentration was found between measured and estimated radioactivity in TL, respectively. Although there were no clear differences in six institutions, %diff institution in one institution tended to be higher than that obtained in other institutions. Conclusions: Our results indicated that measurement accuracy of nine dose calibrators (five models) was relatively stable. However, difference of measured values tended to be higher in a part of institution and source. It is important to perform quality assurance and quality control for dose calibrator using traceable source.

In the data sampling in single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), the continuous rotating acquisition method has high clinical utility. There have been various reports about the optimum sampling step angle for continuous rotating acquisition. Objective evaluation was performed visually and by measuring spatial resolution with a column phantom to find the optimum sampling step angle for continuous rotating acquisition. In locations far from the rotation center, a large sampling step angle produced artificial images with tangential elongation. The spatial resolution was 11.58 ± 0.19 mm full width half maximum (FWHM) as measured at a sampling step angle of 3 degrees and at 10 cm away from the rotation center. Increasing the sampling step angle to more than 3 degrees resulted in an increase of FWHM in the tangential direction. The optimum sampling step angle for continuous rotating acquisition in SPECT needs to be below that calculated from the sampling theorem.