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Variation of system performance, quality control standards and adherence to international FDG-PET/CT imaging guidelines

2014; Schattauer Verlag; Volume: 53; Issue: 06 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3413/nukmed-0665-14-05

2567-6407

Ivo Rausch, Helmar Bergmann, Barbara Katharina Geist, Michael P. Schaffarich, A. Hirtl, Marcus Hacker, Thomas Beyer,

Radiomics and Machine Learning in Medical Imaging

To gather information on clinical operations, quality control (QC) standards and adoption of guidelines for FDG-PET/CT imaging in Austrian PET/CT centres.A written survey composed of 68 questions related to A) PET/CT centre and installation, B) standard protocol parameters for FDG-PET/CT imaging of oncology patients, and C) standard QC procedures was conducted between November and December 2013 among all Austrian PET/CT centres. In addition, a NEMA-NU2 2012 image quality phantom test was performed using standard whole-body imaging settings on all PET/CT systems with a lesion-to-background ratio of 4. Recovery coefficients (RC) were calculated for each lesion and PET/CT system.A) 13 PET/CT systems were installed in 12 nuclear medicine departments at public hospitals. B) Average fasting prior to FDG-PET/CT was 7.6 (4-12) h. All sites measured blood glucose levels while using different cut-off levels (64%: 150 mg/dl). Weight-based activity injection was performed at 83% sites with a mean FDG activity of 4.1 MBq/kg. Average FDG uptake time was 55 (45-75) min. All sites employed CT contrast agents (variation from 1%-95% of the patients). All sites reported SUV-max. C) Frequency of QC tests varied significantly and QC phantom measurements revealed significant differences in RCs.Significant variations in FDG-PET/CT protocol parameters among all Austrian PET/CT users were observed. Subsequently, efforts need to be put in place to further standardize imaging protocols. At a minimum clinical PET/CT operations should ensure compliance with existing guidelines. Further, standardized QC procedures must be followed to improve quantitative accuracy across PET/CT centres.