scope:

The philosophy and rationale of the standards measurements and illustrative examples of the analysis and results are presented in:

Daube-Witherspoon ME, Karp JS, Casey ME, DiFilippo FP, Hines H, Muehllehner G, Simcic V, Stearns CW, Adam L-E, Kohlmyer S and Sossi V. "PET Performance Measurements Using the NEMA NU 2-2001 Standard." Journal of Nuclear Medicine 43, no. 10 (2002): 1398-1409.

The Coincidence Imaging Task Force has attempted to specify methods that can be performed on all currently available positron emission tomographs. These include single and multiple slice, discrete and continuous detector, time-of-flight instruments, multi-planar and volume reconstruction models, and dedicated positron emission tomographs as well as other coincidence-capable imaging systems. Wherever possible, future developments that could be readily anticipated were taken into account. The committee has not specified methods that may be particularly appropriate for evaluating time-of-flight instruments pending further evaluation of those instruments by the clinical and scientific communities.

While many PET tomographs are constructed as hybrid imaging systems such as PET-CT and PET-MR systems, the standards committee has not specified special methods to assess hybrid imaging performance. It is expected that the PET component of a hybrid imaging system can be assessed using the methods described in this standard, and other portions of the system can be assessed using other standards appropriate to that technology. In the event a portion of any of the PET test methods described here cannot be executed in a hybrid imaging system, workaround methods may be used, but those methods must be described in the test report.