The study of performances of an automated radiopharmaceutical administration for PET/CT patients at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: An automated dispensing and infusion system for ¹⁸F-FDG can be simplified the process for manual injection preparation. Since dose calibrator is integrated into the system, this could reduce the radiation exposure to nuclear medicine technologists and nurses who perform injections. Objective: This study aimed to test the performance of the integrated dose calibrator of an automated radiopharmaceutical administration based on the dose calibrator quality control procedures. The output activity was compared with that measured by the dose calibrator used for the PET/CT imaging. Methods: A standard reference source of ¹³⁷Cs was used to test the precision and accuracy of measurements and the reproducibility test.  ¹⁸F-NaF was used to test the linearity of activity response with an initial activity of 40.73 mCi until activity decay to 0.1 mCi. The dose calibrator for PET/CT was used to measure activity output from this automated radiopharmaceutical administration. A paired t-test was used to determine statistically significant at a p-value of 0.01. Results: The integrated dose calibrator had a precision of 0.23% and an accuracy of 0.42%. In the test of repeatability, reproducibility of the measurements was within an acceptable limit of ±5%. The straight line fit to the activity response of ¹⁸F and physical half-life was calculated using the trend line at 109.73 minutes with the difference of 0.009% from the actual. Activity obtained from this automated radiopharmaceutical administration was compared to the activity measured by dose calibrator for PET/CT, and there was no statistically significant (p>0.01). Conclusion: The integrated dose calibrator of an automated radiopharmaceutical administration had passed the quality control tests. The injected activity in the range of 1 - 18 mCi was not different when measured with the dose calibrator for PET/CT.