Accreditation specifications

During the EANM Conference 2018 in Düsseldorf EARL has announced the update of the current EARL performance specifications. The update is based on a recent publication by EARL entitled "Feasibility of stat of the art PET/CT systems performance harmonisation by Kaalep et al. EJNMMI 2018. The update specifications will become effective soon and a transition phase is foreseen at present. The presentation on this EARL update, given by Prof. Dr. R. Boellaard, can be found here . 

EANM FDG PET/CT accrediation specifcations for SUV recovery coefficients

EARL is dedicated towards improving and supporting the quality of nuclear medicine procedures. The EARL accreditation is based on quality control (QC) experiments that were described and published in the EANM guidelines in 2010. Meanwhile the field has moved forward and new developments, technologies and insights have become available. Therefore EARL contacted all EARL accredited centres of excellence in August 2013 in order to kindly request some additional measurements regarding PET/CT (SUVpeak, PSF reconstruction) since EARL would like to adapt and further improve the accreditation programme such that new scanner technologies and data analysis procedures can be accommodated. As soon as some results are available, EARL will inform all sites, which are participating in the EARL accreditation programme, and will also publish the results on the EARL website.

Meanwhile the following specifications are valid:

Author: Ronald Boellaard

Date: January 2017

Based on the results observed during the first pilot study on the accreditation of PET/CT systems as described in the EANM guideline for quantitative FDG PET/CT studies, a redefinition (improvement) of the SUV recoveries seems feasible and warranted.

Table 1: Recovery coefficient (RC) specifications for VOI-A50

Table 2: Recovery coefficient (RC) specifications for MAX