2023 Volume 41 Issue 3 Pages 112-116
Positron emission tomography (PET) can measure in vivo biological processes at the molecular level because to use biological element as radioactive tracers. In Japan, a PET scanner was developed in 1979, and PET research has a history of about 40 years. Recently, PET is not only an essential imaging modality for diagnosis of various diseases in clinical practice but also a molecular imaging technology for drug discovery research. However, the image quality and quantitative of PET images acquired with PET scanners depends on the scanner model, injection dose, scanning duration, and other details of the data acquisition protocol. It also depends on body size, and larger subjects generally give poorer image quality with the same injected activity per weight. There is, therefore, related academic societies have created several standardization guidelines of PET imaging. This paper outlines the history of standardization of PET imaging in Japan and introduces trends in Europe and the United States.
