Quality control and image quality in diagnostic nuclear medicine & PET

Nuclear medicine is critically dependent on the accurate, reproducible performance of clinical radionuclide counting and imaging instrumentation. Advances in γ-camera design over the last 5 to 10 years have improved all aspects of image quality, particularly for tomographic imaging. As system complexity increases, it becomes more important that physicist, technologist and physician be able to recognize the various types of artifacts that can occur in γ-camera systems and their potential impact on clinical studies. A baseline set of quality control results should be recorded, after a thorough evaluation of the system at installation and acceptance testing, to serve as a reference for the life of the equipment. These can be used as a basis for developing detailed protocols for individual systems and models of equipment. As advances in medicine occur at a rapid rate, the review and update of guidelines, such as these, should take place at regular intervals and should be considered to be part of the quality assurance process