The authors have developed a simple phantom and dedicated software for the quality assessment of positron emission tomography (PET) scanners. The phantom is a parallelepiped box filled with a relatively low activity (18)FDG solution and in which simple test objects are placed. Various image quality parameters are checked, including signal-to-noise ratio, image uniformity, slice thickness, slice sensitivity profile, spatial resolution, and dose calibration accuracy. Automatic image analysis consists in detecting surfaces and objects, defining regions of interest, acquiring reference point coordinates, and establishing gray-scale profiles. The total time needed for quality assessment (preparation and image acquisition) is less than 15 min with 37 MBq (1 mCi) (18)FDG. The system's ease of use encourages frequent image quality assessment-for example, the comparison of PET scanners in interdepartment studies and the monitoring and evaluation of possible drifts over time. By way of an example, the authors present weekly quality assessment results obtained over up to 7 months at four PET facilities. (C) 2008 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.
Adam L.-E., Zaers J., Ostertag H., Trojan H., Bellemann M.E., Brix G., Performance evaluation of the whole-body PET scanner ECAT EXACT HR/sup +/ following the IEC standard, 10.1109/23.596983
Etchebehere, Q. J. Nucl. Med., 46, 122 (2002)
Bergmann Helmar, Dobrozemsky Georg, Minear Gregory, Nicoletti Rudolf, Samal Martin, An inter-laboratory comparison study of image quality of PET scanners using the NEMA NU 2-2001 procedure for assessment of image quality, 10.1088/0031-9155/50/10/001
Herzog H., Tellmann L., Hocke C., Pietrzyk U., Casey M.E., Kuwert T., NEMA NU2-2001 guided performance evaluation of four Siemens ECAT PET scanners, 10.1109/tns.2004.835778
Hyde Rosemary J., Ellis James H., Gardner Edward A., Zhang Yantian, Carson Paul L., MRI scanner variability studies using a semi-automated analysis system, 10.1016/0730-725x(94)91241-n
MacIntyre William J., Alfidi Ralph J., Haaga John, Chernak Edward, Meany Thomas F., Comparative Modulation Transfer Functions of the EMI and Delta Scanners, 10.1148/120.1.189
Judy, Phantoms for performance evaluation and quality assurance of CT scanners, 23 (1977)
Wells William M., Viola Paul, Atsumi Hideki, Nakajima Shin, Kikinis Ron, Multi-modal volume registration by maximization of mutual information, 10.1016/s1361-8415(01)80004-9
Comtat C., Kinahan P.E., Defrise M., Michel C., Townsend D.W., Fast reconstruction of 3D PET data with accurate statistical modeling, 10.1109/23.681983
Browne J., de Pierro A.B., A row-action alternative to the EM algorithm for maximizing likelihood in emission tomography, 10.1109/42.538946
Hudson H.M., Larkin R.S., Accelerated image reconstruction using ordered subsets of projection data, 10.1109/42.363108
Watson C.C., New, faster, image-based scatter correction for 3D PET, 10.1109/23.873020
Bergstrom, J. Comput. Assist. Tomogr., 10, 845 (1983)
Boellaard, J. Nucl. Med., 45, 1519 (2004)
Vial S., Gibon D., Vasseur C., Rousseau J., Volume delineation by fusion of fuzzy sets obtained from multiplanar tomographic images, 10.1109/42.974931
G. Palos N. Betrouni M. Coulanges M. Vermandel V. Devlaminck J. Rousseau Multimodal matching by maximisation of mutual information and optical flow technique 3 1679 1682 2004
Knoess C., Gremillion T., Schmand M., Casey M.E., Eriksson L., Lenox M., Treffert J.T., Vollmar S., Fluegge G., Wienhard K., Heiss W.-D., Nutt R., Development of a daily quality check procedure for the High-Resolution Research Tomograph (HRRT) using natural LSO background radioactivity, 10.1109/tns.2002.803787
www.aquilab.com
Bibliographic reference
Vermandel, M. ; Fin, L. ; Hapdey, S. ; Bol, Anne ; Betrouni, N. ; et. al. An easy-to-use phantom and protocol for weekly PET quality assessment: A multicenter study. In: Medical Physics, Vol. 35, no. 9, p. 3922-3934 (2008)
Huglo, D.
