Operational and Dosimetric Aspects of Pediatric PET/CT.
J Nucl Med
; 58(9): 1360-1366, 2017 09.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28687601
ABSTRACT
No consistent guidelines exist for the acquisition of a CT scan as part of pediatric PET/CT. Given that children may be more vulnerable to the effects of ionizing radiation, it is necessary to develop methods that provide diagnostic-quality imaging when needed, in the shortest time and with the lowest patient radiation exposure. This article describes the basics of CT dosimetry and PET/CT acquisition in children. We describe the variability in pediatric PET/CT techniques, based on a survey of 19 PET/CT pediatric institutions in North America. The results of the survey demonstrated that, although most institutions used automatic tube current modulation, there remained a large variation of practice, on the order of a factor of 2-3, across sites, pointing to the need for guidelines. We introduce the approach developed at our institution for using a multiseries PET/CT acquisition technique that combines diagnostic-quality CT in the essential portion of the field of view and a low-dose technique to image the remainder of the body. This approach leads to a reduction in radiation dose to the patient while combining the PET and the diagnostic CT into a single acquisition. The standardization of pediatric PET/CT provides an opportunity for a reduction in the radiation dose to these patients while maintaining an appropriate level of diagnostic image quality.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Radiometry
/
Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography
Type of study:
Guideline
/
Qualitative_research
Limits:
Child
/
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
J Nucl Med
Year:
2017
Document type:
Article