Abstract
A cardiac phantom suitable for quality control of gated blood pool studies is desired. Three commercially available cardiac phantoms purport to fulfill the needs of monitoring the total imaging system. The Vanderbilt phantom has considerable drawbacks, arising mainly from the attenuation of ventricular and background activity from the rotation of an attenuator, which consequently renders it unsuitable for quality control of both the hardware and software of the system. The Jake phantom, though of different design, also suffers from the same drawback in that the counts arising from the background chamber vary in both the region of the left ventricle and the normally adjacent “background” region. Otherwise, it is a satisfactory model for checking overall system performance. The Veenstra cardiac phantom produces a good simulation of left and right ventricular wall motion and stroke volume changes, and constant overlying background activity. Of these phantoms, the Veenstra phantom offers the most versatility for routine quality control of the overall system.
Footnotes
↵* Present Address: Dept. of Nuclear Medicine, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
