Introduction: The level of administered activity in radionuclide therapy is often limited by haematological toxicity resulting from the absorbed dose delivered to the bone marrow. The purpose of these EANM guidelines is to provide advice to scientists and clinicians on data acquisition and data analysis related to bone-marrow and whole-body dosimetry.
Materials and methods: The guidelines are divided into sections "Data acquisition" and "Data analysis". The Data acquisition section provides advice on the measurements required for accurate dosimetry including blood samples, quantitative imaging and/or whole-body measurements with a single probe. Issues specific to given radiopharmaceuticals are considered. The Data analysis section provides advice on the calculation of absorbed doses to the whole body and the bone marrow. The total absorbed dose to the bone marrow consists of contributions from activity in the bone marrow itself (self-absorbed dose) and the cross-absorbed dose to the bone marrow from activity in bone, larger organs and the remainder of the body.
Conclusion: As radionuclide therapy enters an era where patient-specific dosimetry is used to guide treatments, accurate bone-marrow and whole-body dosimetry will become an essential element of treatment planning. We hope that these guidelines will provide a basis for the optimization and standardization of the treatment of cancer with radiopharmaceuticals, which will facilitate single- and multi-centre radionuclide therapy studies.