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Nuclear medicine (NM) diagnostic procedures use ionizing radiation and it is necessary to ensure that the amount of prescribed activity is as low as reasonably achievable. Optimizing these procedures, one of the greatest challenges facing Nuclear Medicine today, is based on achieving a balance between image quality and radiation dose. The objective of this article is to establish and validate a method for optimization studies of medical exposure in NM simulating different levels of activity that can be applied in patients without violating the ethical and radiological protection principles. The method is based on the recombination of data obtained in gated acquisitions to simulate activity levels. For this, measurements were made using different phantoms and a signal generator. A python code was developed that allows the different activity levels to be simulated automatically from a single gated acquisition and returns the studies in the same dicom format to be reconstructed in the registered processing program provided by the manufacturer. To validate our method, the linear dependence of the number of total counts with the simulated activity levels was demonstrated and the quality of the reconstructed images vs the simulated activity levels was qualitatively evaluated. This method constitutes a valid and applicable proposal in the majority of nuclear medicine services in the country to implement optimization procedures for SPECT studies, contributing to a reduction in population exposure to radiation, due to high-tech diagnostic tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction in Cuba of imaging hybrid systems in nuclear medicine has become a challenge for medical physicist in order to guaranty the patient´s radiation safety and proper dose estimation. The aim of this study was to retrospectively evaluate the CT radiation doses for studies performed with a SPECT/CT hybrid system (SPECT/CT). A MATLAB “in house” made tool was tested and validated for this purpose. 62 patients with CT studies were manually and automatically reviewed; the tool could visualize and properly recover the patient personal information, CT protocol and dose related data from the DICOM header in the SPECT/CT study file. The CT volume dose index (CTDIvol) parameter was used for calculating the CT dose-length product (DPL) and the effective doses (E). The CT radiation dose preliminary results were on the range of those reported by others authors for the typical studies, demonstrating the efficacy of the tool developed and the CT dose assessment method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is aimed at establishing the association of the dyslipidemia with the positive results of the myocardial perfusion SPECT, for the optimization of use. 152 MPSPECT were analyzed, different days, for an average age of 58.32 years, 86 (56.6%), were males. Considering the presence of dyslipidemia, the patients were divided into two groups: dyslipidemia, n = 37(24.3%) and not-dyslipidemia, n = 115 (75.7%). No significant differences were present in the age average (59.59/57.90, p = 0.284), in the body mass index (24.85/25.03, p=0.739), nor in the frequency of mature. Therefore, only dyslipidemia contributes to therefore the additional risk. Result: 102 (67.1%) MPSPECT were positive. In the comparison among groups no significant difference in the incidence of positive results was observed (67.60/67.00, p = 0.945), and the same situation remained when the groups were subdivided into symptomatic and asymptomatic. As a result of the study, it was concluded that dyslipidemia does not represent a significant risk of ischemic cardiopathy in patients within the ages of risk, therefore there is no significant association with the positive results of the SPECTPM, within patients in ages of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]