Abstract
The image quality in 18FDG PET/CT often degrades as the body size increases. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between image quality and the body size using original phantoms of variable cross-sectional areas in PET/CT. We produced five water phantoms with different cross-sectional areas. The long axis of phantom was 925 mm, and the cross-sectional area was from 324 to 1189 cm2. These phantoms with the sphere (diameter 10 mm) were filled with 18F-FDG solution. The radioactivity concentration of background in the phantom was 1.37, 2.73, 4.09 and 5.46 kBq/mL. The scanning duration was 30 min in list mode acquisition for each measurement. Background variability (N10 mm), noise equivalent count rates (NECRphantom), hot sphere contrast (QH,10 mm) as physical evaluation and visual score of sphere detection were measured, respectively. The relationship between image quality and the various cross-sectional areas was also analyzed under the above-mentioned conditions. As cross-sectional area increased, NECRphantom progressively decreased. Furthermore, as cross-sectional area increased, N10 mm increased and QH,10 mm decreased. Image quality became degraded as body weight increased because noise and contrast contributed to image quality. The visual score of sphere detection deteriorated in high background radioactivity concentration because a false positive detection in cross-sectional area of the phantom increased. However, additional increases in scanning periods could improve the visual score. We assessed tendencies in the relationship between image quality and body size in PET/CT. Our results showed that time adjustment was more effective than dose adjustment for stable image quality of heavier patients in terms of the large cross-sectional area.
