Dose evaluation of the one-year-old child in PET imaging by ¹⁸F-(DOPA, FDG, FLT, FET) and ⁶⁸Ga-EDTA using reference voxel phantoms

Abstract

Because of more sensitive organs due to high growth rates, evaluating the absorbed dose is essential for children to prevent irreparable damage. Therefore, to this aim, a one-year-old child's whole-body effective dose and organ absorbed dose were evaluated for various PET imaging Radiopharmaceuticals such as:18F-DOPA, 18F-FDG, 18F-FLT, 18F-FET, and 68Ga-EDTA. For this aim, one-year-old child reference voxel phantoms and GATE Monte Carlo simulation were used, and the results were compared with the ICRP128 report (for stylized phantom). The highest absorbed dose was related to bladder wall (for 18F-DOPA, 18F-FET, and 68Ga-EDTA), heart wall (for 18F-FDG), and liver (for 18F-FLT) between 30 organs that have been studied. Comparing the results with the ICRP128 report values for a one-year-old child show a significant difference in some organs. Comparison of the effective dose with the ICRP128 report shows a relative difference of 22%, 12.5%, 11.8%, 10.8% and 8.6% for 18F-DOPA, 68Ga-EDTA, 18F-FDG, 18F-FET, 18F-FLT, respectively. In conclusion, using new one-year-old voxel phantoms could provide a better estimate of organs absorbed dose and whole-body effective dose due to its exact structure.