PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pirozzi, Maria Agnese
AU  - Gaudieri, Valeria
AU  - Prinster, Anna
AU  - Magliulo, Mario
AU  - Cuocolo, Alberto
AU  - Brunetti, Arturo
AU  - Alfano, Bruno
AU  - Quarantelli, Mario
TI  - StepBrain: A 3-Dimensionally Printed Multicompartmental Anthropomorphic Brain Phantom to Simulate PET Activity Distributions
AID  - 10.2967/jnumed.123.267277
DP  - 2024 Sep 01
TA  - Journal of Nuclear Medicine
PG  - 1489--1492
VI  - 65
IP  - 9
4099  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/65/9/1489.short
4100  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/65/9/1489.full
SO  - J Nucl Med2024 Sep 01; 65
AB  - An innovative multicompartmental anatomic brain phantom (StepBrain) is described to simulate the in vivo tracer uptake of gray matter, white matter, and striatum, overcoming the limitations of currently available phantoms. Methods: StepBrain was created by exploiting the potential of fused deposition modeling 3-dimensional printing to replicate the real anatomy of the brain compartments, as modeled through ad hoc processing of healthy-volunteer MR images. Results: A realistic simulation of 18F-FDG PET brain studies, using target activity to obtain the real concentration ratios, was obtained, and the results of postprocessing with partial-volume effect correction tools developed for human PET studies confirmed the accuracy of these methods in recovering the target activity concentrations. Conclusion: StepBrain compartments (gray matter, white matter, and striatum) can be simultaneously filled, achieving different concentration ratios and allowing the simulation of different (e.g., amyloid, tau, or 6-fluoro-l-dopa) tracer distributions, with a potentially valuable role for multicenter PET harmonization studies.