Software package for integrated data processing for internal dose assessment in nuclear medicine (SPRIND).
OBJECTIVE
Internal radiation dose calculations are normally carried out using the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) schema. This requires residence times of radiopharmaceutical activity and S-values for all organs of interest. Residence times can be obtained by quantitative nuclear imaging modalities. For dealing with S-values, the freeware packages MIRDOSE and, more recently, OLINDA/EXM are available. However, these software packages do not calculate residence times from image data.


RESULTS
For this purpose, we developed an IDL-based software package for integrated data processing for internal dose assessment in nuclear medicine (SPRIND). SPRIND allows reading and viewing of planar whole-body scintigrams. Organ and background regions of interest (ROIs) can be drawn and are automatically mirrored from the anterior to the posterior view. ROI statistics are used to obtain anterior-posterior averaged counts for each organ, corrected for background activity and attenuation. Residence times for each organ are calculated based on effective decay. The total body biological half-time is calculated for use in the voiding bladder model. Red bone marrow absorbed dose can be calculated using bone regions in the scintigrams or by a blood-derived method. Finally, the results are written to a file in MIRDOSE-OLINDA/EXM format. Using scintigrams in DICOM, the complete analysis is gamma camera vendor independent, and can be performed on any computer using an IDL virtual machine.


CONCLUSIONS
SPRIND is an easy-to-use software package for radiation dose assessment studies. It has made these studies less time consuming and less error prone.
Visser
Eric
E
Department of Nuclear Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. e.visser@nucmed.umcn.nl
Postema
Ernst
E
Boerman
Otto
O
Visschers
Jeroen
J
Oyen
Wim
W
Corstens
Frans
F
D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008657:Metabolic Clearance Rate; D008954:Models, Biological; D009683:Nuclear Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D009928:Organ Specificity; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000032:analysis* / Q000493:pharmacokinetics*; D012984:Software; D012985:Software Design; D014018:Tissue Distribution; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014915:Whole-Body Counting / Q000379:methods*
D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals