Practicality of NEMA performance specification measurements for user-based acceptance testing and routine quality...

National Electrical Manufactures Association ( NEMA ) performance specifications provide the only standardized and traceable measurements of scintillation-camera performance that are widely accepted by manufacturers. The NEMA publication describing the performance specifications suggests that elaborate equipment beyond a standard imaging computer is required for the measurements. For this reason the tests are currently unsuitable for both user-based acceptance testing and daily quality assurance. We have implemented five of the eight NEMA performance measurements as routine quality-assurance procedures on our computerized scintillation cameras. In addition, we have shown that seven of the eight NEMA measurements can be performed in a manner traceable to NEMA , with energy resolution as the single exception. With a standard imaging computer, NEMA phantom, and minor modification to NEMA collection and analysis constraints, we have analyzed images for intrinsic uniformity, resolution, linearity, and multiple-window spatial registration as well as for system spatial resolution both with and without scatter.