ABSTRACT
An essential element of any high-performing department is a robust quality assurance (QA) programme. This chapter provides a handbook of required knowledge to design, implement, and run a QA programme for nuclear medicine equipment, describing the acceptance test, commissioning, and quality control test elements of such programmes. Covering all types of imaging equipment, from traditional gamma cameras, through SPECT and CZT systems to modern PET/CT and PET/MR systems, the chapter provides a ‘why, how, what and when’ approach to a full range of tests, as well as providing values that you should expect from such tests. Given the hybrid nature of modern nuclear medicine equipment, which can incorporate both CT and MR with nuclear medicine imaging systems, a hybrid imager’s approach to quality assurance for these subsystems is also provided. And, given the importance the dose calibrator has in the imaging chain, the quality assurance of this device will also be discussed. Altogether, this chapter provides all-you-need-to-know coverage of quality assurance for nuclear medicine systems.
