Development Of A Physical Head Phantom Using Of A Solid Brain Equivalent Tissue For The Calibration Of The F-18-Fdg Internal Monitoring System

The F-18 F-labeled fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (F-18-FDG) is the most widely used cyclotron-generated positron-emitting radiopharmaceutical in the clinical applications of PET scans. The production of radiopharmaceuticals such as F-18-FDG always presents internal contamination risks for the occupationally exposed workers. It is important to perform Individual monitoring on workers in case of incorporation or routinely. Usually, the calibration of these internal monitoring systems is performed using physical phantoms. This work aims to present the development of a physical head phantom for the calibration of an 18F-FDG in vivo internal monitoring system. Two materials, Ml and M2, composed of water, agar, and urea were proposed for the solid brain equivalent tissue. These materials presented the required characteristics of a brain equivalent tissue for the physical phantom construction in terms of morphology, material distribution, radiation attenuation, consistency, availability and low cost. Computational studies were performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed materials. The calibration coefficients obtained for physical head phantom produced with material M2 and a known activity of 18F-FDG showed a good correlation with Monte Carlo results.