PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Barry Babchyck AU - William Robeson AU - Christopher Palestro AU - Kenneth Nichols TI - Automatic phantom transaxial slice processing DP - 2009 May 01 TA - Journal of Nuclear Medicine PG - 1432--1432 VI - 50 IP - supplement 2 4099 - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/50/supplement_2/1432.short 4100 - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/50/supplement_2/1432.full SO - J Nucl Med2009 May 01; 50 AB - 1432 Objectives SPECT phantoms containing rods and spheres, used for routine quarterly quality assurance tasks, are required for American College of Radiology (ACR) accreditation. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the degree of agreement between visual observations of 2 observers, and between an automated program (AP) and the observers, for determining the number of spheres and rod sections seen. Methods Attenuation corrected transaxial slices for phantoms were processed for 99mTc (n=20), 18F18 (n=3) and 201Tl (n=3). The AP chose and displayed optimal slices for rod, sphere and uniform sections, which were summed as per ACR directions. The number of spheres and rod sectors detected by the AP were based primarily on contrast thresholds. Two independent blinded observers (1, 2) reviewed data from AP generated images. Each sphere and rod sector was rated "not seen," "equivocal," or "definitely seen." Inter-observer agreement was assessed by the kappa statistic and significance of differences by McNemar's test. Results There were no significant differences between the observers or between the observers and the AP. Strength of agreement between the observers and the AP was comparable to strength of inter-observer agreement (Table). Conclusions These results indicate that the AP may be used for analyzing tomographic phantom data that are acquired in a standardized way as required by the ACR.