Abstract
The 2010 North American Consensus Guidelines (NACG) for pediatric administered doses and the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) dosage card recommend lower administered activities than those given at our institution. We compared the quality of the lower-activity images to the higher-activity images to determine if the reduction in counts affects overall image quality. Methods: Twenty patients presenting to our pediatric radiology department for bone scintigraphy were evaluated. Mean weight was 20 kg. Patients were referred for oncologic (n = 5), infectious/inflammatory (n = 5), and pain (n = 5) evaluation. Dynamic anterior and posterior images were acquired for 5 minutes for each patient. Data were subsampled to represent different administered activities corresponding to the activities recommended by the NACG and EANM dosage card. Images were evaluated for diagnostic quality and acceptability for daily clinical use. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in the diagnostic quality of the images from any of the three protocols. Pathologic uptake was correctly identified independent of the administered activity , although there was one false-positive on an EANM image. When subjectively evaluating images as acceptable for daily clinical use, there was a slight preference for the higher activity images over the NACG (P = 0.04). Conclusion: The recommended administered activities of the NACG produce images of diagnostic quality, while reducing patient radiation exposure.
- Pediatrics
- Quality Assurance
- Radiobiology/Dosimetry
- North American Consensus Guidelines
- dose reduction
- pediatric bone scintigraphy
- Copyright © 2015 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Inc.