Radiation dose reduction in myocardial perfusion imaging single-photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography using a dose-tracking software

We describe our experience with a dose-tracking software (Radimetrics) that was used to optimize, from a dosimetric point of view, the single-photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography protocols used in myocardial perfusion imaging. Patients and methods We extracted and assessed the major dosimetric indices as the administered activity, the computed tomography dose index, the dose length product and the size-specific dose estimates for a large sample of patients before and after an optimization process. We also evaluated both the effective and the equivalent dose to organs for all the procedures. Results We achieved a reduction in administered activity by 17.8 and 4.5% for 2- and 1-day protocols, respectively; moreover size-specific dose estimates related to a single computed tomography acquisition was reduced by 50%. The organs that received the highest equivalent dose were the heart and the breast, and with the new protocols, these values were almost halved. The average single-photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography myocardial perfusion imaging effective dose decreased from 21.9±2.5 to 15.6±1.4 mSv for the 2-day protocol and from 17.8±1.7 to 13.6±1.5 mSv for the 1-day protocol. This meant that with a simple but targeted action on acquisition protocols, it was possible to achieve considerable dosimetric reduction. The adoption of a dose-tracking software represented an easy approach to optimization. Furthermore, we could easily ca...
Source: Nuclear Medicine Communications - Category: Nuclear Medicine Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research