EFOMP's protocol quality controls in PET/CT and PET/MR.

This article presents the protocol on Quality Controls in PET/CT and PET/MRI published online in May 2022 by the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics (EFOMP), which was developed by the Working group for PET/CT and PET/MRI Quality Control (QC) protocol. The main objective of this protocol was to comprehensively provide simple and practical procedures that may be integrated into clinical practice to identify changes in the PET/CT/MRI system's performance and avoid short- and long-term quality deterioration. The protocol describes the quality control procedures on radionuclide calibrators, weighing scales, PET, CT and MRI systems using selected and measurable parameters that are directly linked to clinical images quality.

Quality control in PET/CT and PET/MRI: Results of a survey amongst European countries.

Purpose: An EFOMP Working Group (WG) was created in 2020 to establish recommendations for PET/CT/MRI Quality Control (QC). The WG's intention was to create a document containing a set of measurements suitable for routine practice. In order to map the current situation in PET facilities, the WG prepared a survey addressed to European Medical Physics Experts (MPE).

Development and performance assessment of an advanced Lucas-Kanade algorithm for dose mapping of cervical cancer external radiotherapy and brachytherapy plans.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to verify the possibility of summing the dose distributions of combined radiotherapeutic treatment of cervical cancer using the extended Lucas-Kanade algorithm for deformable image registration.

Materials And Methods: First, a deformable registration of planning computed tomography images for the external radiotherapy and brachytherapy treatment of 10 patients with different parameter settings of the Lucas-Kanade algorithm was performed. By evaluating the registered data using landmarks distance, root mean square error of Hounsfield units and 2D gamma analysis, the optimal parameter values were found.

Optimal reconstruction matrix and PET image filtration for point-spread function and time-of-flight reconstruction - A phantom study.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to determine the optimal image matrix and half-width of the Gaussian filter after iterative reconstruction of the PET image with point-spread function (PSF) and time-of-flight (TOF) correction, based on measuring the recovery coefficient (RC) curves. The measured RC curves were compared to those from an older system which does not use PSF and TOF corrections.

Materials And Methods: The measurements were carried out on a NEMA IEC Body Phantom.

Analysis of planar acintigraphic images using the Li-Ma technique.

A statistics-based approach to comparison of planar scintigraphic images is introduced to provide additional information to subtraction method. The proposed procedure leads to parametric images with better noise properties allowing subsequent statistical analysis. An example of an application of the technique is given using parathyroid scintigrams.

Bone SPECT image reconstruction using deconvolution and wavelet transformation: development, performance assessment and comparison in phantom and patient study with standard OSEM and resolution recovery algorithm.

Purpose: The aim of this work was to introduce a new algorithm for image reconstruction in bone SPECT and to compare its performances with a commercially available standard OSEM and resolution recovery (RR) reconstruction.

Materials And Methods: The algorithm was built applying the Lucy-Richardson deconvolution adn logarithmic image processing to the projections. A modification of the coefficients of wavelet decomposition was used to suppress the noise.

Tc-99m exametazime (HMPAO)-labeled leukocyte scintigraphy in premature infants: detection and localization of necrotic enterocolitis and osteomyelitis.

Two cases of successful detection of inflammatory foci using Tc-99m exametazime (HMPAO)-labeled leukocyte scintigraphy in premature infants were reported. Necrotizing enterocolitis was detected in a child with a body weight of 1.6 kg.

Comparison of different techniques for stereotactic positron emission tomography imaging.

Background And Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate three different techniques used for stereotactic positron emission tomography (PET) image definition: (1) PET imaging with external stereotactic radioactive markers, (2) PET imaging without external stereotactic markers and subsequent coregistration with stereotactically defined imaging modality such as computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), (3) PET/CT imaging with utilization of external nonradioactive markers.

Materials And Methods: Special head phantom that could be fixed in the Leksell stereotactic frame was used. The phantom was filled with fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG) in water solution at an activity concentration of 17.