Abstract
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Objectives The aim of this study is to evaluate if the radiation dose due to PET component in pediatric brain F-18 FDG PET/CT could be reduced by 50% using recently introduced PET time-of-flight (FX) technique and SharpIR (SIR) algorithm.
Methods Five pediatric patients underwent whole brain F-18 FDG PET/CT imaging using D690 (GE) PET/CT scanner, following the administration of 0.15 mCi/kg. We obtained their brain PET images in 12-minute scans. We also simulated 50% dose reduction via reconstruction of simulated 6-minute scans from the acquired list data. FDG brain scans were reconstructed using VUE Point with FX and SIR algorithm. We used 2.0 mm Gaussian in-plane post filter, heavy axial filter and 18/4 and 16/8 subsets/iterations for full and half dose, respectively. Two groups of images were obtained: group A with 100% and group B with 50% dose, respectively. Four nuclear medicine physicians blinded to the administered activity independently reviewed the images and compared diagnostic quality of images.
Results No significant differences were reported in the final interpretation of the images from A and B groups.
Conclusions This study indicates that radiation dose from F-18 FDG PET for our 5 pediatric patients in whole brain PET/CT studies could be reduced 50% (i.e. allowing administration of 0.07 mCi/kg only) without compromising the diagnostic performance. The larger clinical trials are needed to confirm that 50% dose reduction could be applied to all pediatric patients