| dc.description.abstract | Task Group Report 126 was created to summarize acceptance testing and quality assurance tests for PET/CT systems. There are very few specialized phantoms in this report but one is a phantom that places points sources in 3 capillary tubes at specific locations relative to isocenter. This phantom while relatively simple may not be owned by all physicists wanting to conduct the test prescribed in TG 126. This problem of availability may be solved with the use of 3D printing. Custom phantoms may be easily designed and created by the end user using 3D printing1,. 3D printing has been developed in recent years to become a widely used tool with numerous applications and methods. In particular, medical imaging phantom development has become an area of interest, and even simple phantoms have been created to address simple image quality or quantitation tasks.3 The aim of this project was to develop and evaluate a phantom created to match TG 126 spatial resolution and registration testing instructions.
A model was designed in tinkerCAD (AutoDesk, San Rafael, CA) a computer-aided design software. The design was created such that it would place capillary tubes at the locations indicated by task group report 126 for spatial resolution evaluation of PET/CT scanners. This includes 1 cm, 10 cm, and 20 cm from the isocenter in one direction and another capillary tube 10 cm from the isocenter in an orthogonal direction. The print also includes a bracket so it can mount to existing CT phantom holders which are common to most PET/CT scanners. The design was separated into three separate parts to ensure it would not require the use of 3D-printed supports. The design was then printed on a consumer-grade 3D printer, Flashforge CreatorPro (Flashforge, Jinhua City, China). The location of placed capillary tubes was measured to verify dimensional accuracy. Then it was loaded with radioactive capillary tubes and imaged to demonstrate the utility for registration purposes. Additionally, FWHM values were measured | en_US |
