Abstract
Diagnostic imaging plays a vital role on patient management. Therefore, it is extremely important that all imaging equipment used in nuclear medicine facilities operate at optimal system performance. This allows the acquisition of images of reliable diagnostic quality while optimizing radiation dose to patients. Moreover, the high cost and increasing complexity of diagnostic procedures demand optimized performance of imaging equipment. A Quality Assurance (QA) programme should be established and followed as part of the routine and essential work of a nuclear medicine department, to assure the safe and effective use of all imaging equipment and to comply with applicable regulations. This applies to planar gamma cameras, SPECT systems and hybrid systems such as SPECT/CT, PET/CT and PET/MR. This chapter describes the main aspects of a QA programme for planar gamma cameras, SPECT and SPECT/CT systems, and the reader is referred to other documents [1–3] for other imaging modalities.
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Notes
- 1.
The Hounsfield unit (HU) scale is based on a linear transformation of the linear attenuation coefficient as measured by CT in which the radiodensity of water is assigned a value of 0 HU and that of air at STP a value of 1000 HU. For a material X with linear attenuation coefficient μX, the corresponding HU value is therefore {(μX − μwater)/(μwater − μair)} × 1000, where μwater and μair are the linear attenuation coefficients of water and air, respectively.
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Poli, G.L., Zanzonico, P. (2021). Quality Control of Planar and SPECT Imaging Systems. In: Khalil, M.M. (eds) Basic Sciences of Nuclear Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65245-6_11
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