A study to obtain the reliability of the SUV in PET/CT images

Objectives As the number of domestic medical institutions installing PET/CT is increasing rapidly, the transfer of PET/CT images among medical institutions is also increasing. Thus, it is necessary to collect the comparative SUV data from several medical institutions’ PET/CT systems through a phantom study. The research to find differences among the SUVs from various PET/CT offers the opportunity to obtain the reliability of the SUV in PET/CT images.

Methods The six PET/CT systems (A Discovery ST, 2 Discovery STe, 2 Biograph Duo, and a Biograph TurePoint 40) from the medical institutions in Korea were used. The internal structures of NEMA PET phantom TM were removed and Six thousand milliliters of distilled water which has 1mCi of F-18 FDG was put into the phantom. The images were acquired at 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 and 120-minutes for 3 minute each . Two hundred square centimeters of region of interests were placed and analyzed.

Results The coefficient of variability of the SUV from -11.0 to 9.90 % fell into the range of international standards(±10%) along with the SUV on a bed, the change scale of the SUV on the slices, and the time of measuring, except one PET/CT system. Using data of the differences among the SUVs, we came to withdraw a correction chart ranging from 0.803 to 1.246.

Conclusions Although studies have been made on the variation of the SUV, there is little attention on the standardization of the SUV. Based on this study of the quantitatively comparable data about the SUV accommodating the correction chart, it would help to have more corrective diagnosis.