Clinical NECR in 18F-FDG PET scans: Optimization of patient specific activity and variable acquisition time. Relationship with SNR

摘要

It is common to optimize the patient specific activity and the acquisition time per bed position for 18F-FDG PET scans by using metrics extracted from phantom experiments. However, optimal activity and time duration can significantly vary from experimental set-up and from patient to patient. An approach using a patient-specific noise equivalent count rate (NECR) has been proposed and showed that it could be used for optimizing clinical scanning protocols for 18F-FDG-based acquisitions. In this work, we propose to use the clinical NECR on a large population as a function of the body mass index (BMI) for deriving the optimal injected activity (IA) and the optimal acquisition time per bed position (oAT). The relationship between the NECR and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was also assessed both in an experimental and a clinical setting.