Absolute Quantification in Diagnostic SPECT/CT: The Phantom Premise.

Area of Science:

• Nuclear Medicine
• Medical Imaging
• Radiotherapy

Background:

• Absolute quantification in SPECT/CT is essential for patient-specific dosimetry in radionuclide therapies, mandated by EU legislation.
• Adoption of absolute quantification for diagnostic nuclear medicine is slow due to a lack of validated ground truth measurements.
• Additive manufacturing (3D printing) is rapidly advancing and increasingly used in medical imaging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent literature on the use of 3D printed phantoms for validating quantitative imaging in nuclear medicine.
• To highlight the potential of 3D printing to overcome validation challenges in diagnostic nuclear medicine applications.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of recent studies focusing on absolute quantification in SPECT/CT and the use of 3D printed phantoms.
• Analysis of the current state-of-the-art in additive manufacturing for creating application-specific imaging phantoms.

Main Results:

• 3D printed phantoms have significantly impacted quantitative imaging, offering a pathway to establish ground truth measurements.
• The advancements in 3D printing technology make the validation of diagnostic nuclear medicine applications feasible.

Conclusions:

• Application-specific phantoms, enabled by 3D printing, are key to validating diagnostic uses of absolute quantification in nuclear medicine.
• The integration of advanced 3D printing techniques is poised to accelerate the clinical translation of quantitative SPECT/CT.