Speaker
Description
Authors: Andrew J Fenwick 1,2, Andrew P. Robinson 1, Ana Denis Bacelar 1, Kelley Ferreira 1, Daniel Deidda 1, Warda Heetun 1, Chris Marshall 2,3, Stephen Paisey 2,3, Wil Evans 2,3
Affiliation: 1 National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK, 2 Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff, UK, 3 Wales Research and Diagnostic PET Imaging Centre, Cardiff, Wales
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a powerful diagnostic tool in the field of nuclear medicine. The use of novel radioisotopes has significantly increased in recent years and there has been an international drive for new standards of radioactivity for radionuclides such as 89Zr. To accurately quantify radioactivity distributions in PET images it is necessary to calibrate imaging equipment and perform verification measurements. This paper evaluates the quantitative accuracy of PET imaging systems used for activity measurement of 89Zr and how to link these systems to primary standards of radioactivity.
A methodology was developed for creating traceable imaging objects to be used for calibration and verification measurements in PET imaging. Uncertainties were estimated for each stage of the measurement chain and combined where appropriate to give overall uncertainty budgets. The results show that traceable imaging measurements are achievable in both preclinical and clinical PET systems, but uncertainty assessment is challenging when dealing with proprietary acquisition and reconstruction algorithms. Future work is also discussed, and it is hoped these projects will further develop the metrology required for traceable PET imaging in the clinical environment and open the door to a new era of accuracy and precision and harmonisation in PET activity quantification.
