THE CEC EMISSION PHANTOM FOR PET AND SPECT

The CEC Emission Phantom was defined by a task group within the PET instrumentation programme of the CEC Concerted Action on 'PET Investigation of Cellular Regeneration and Degeneration'. It is based on a design, developed for SPECT at the Medical University Hannover, nine years ago. The basis philosophy of this phantom is to simulate realistic measuring conditions, as found under routine clinical work, as closely as possible. This implies a thorough consideration of attenuation and Compton scattering within the patient, which considerably influence the performance of PET and SPECT instruments. The measurements described in this work show that the exclusive evaluation with test methods yielding intrinsic performance parameters only, is insufficient as well as dangerous. A concise description of the phantom is given and some examples illustrate the necessity of such realistic phantoms, by demonstrating the influence of attenuation on the reconstructed image in SPECT.