Discovery 610

All included patients underwent a [18F]FDG PET/CT scan in a dedicated tomograph: -Philips Gemini Dual-slice EXP (Philips Medical Systems, Cleveland, OH, USA) at AOU Città della Salute e della Scienza;-Discovery 610 and Discovery IQ (GE Healthcare, Chicago, IL, USA) at Affidea-IRMET.
Patients were instructed to fast for at least 6 h before the scan, and blood glucose levels were measured before the injection of [18F]FDG. Patients were excluded if their blood glucose levels at the time of the scans exceeded 150 mg/dL (median (IQR) = 5.1 (4.7|6.9) mmol/L). The intravenous injected tracer activity was of 2.5–3 MBq/kg of 18F]FDG (median (IQR) = 230.0 (210.0|269.0) MBq), according to EAMN procedure guidelines [29 (link)].
After an uptake time of 60 min (median (IQR) = 73.0 (57.0|112.0) min) and following native low-dose CT acquisition both for attenuation correction and anatomical correlation (from the vertex of the skull to the feet), PET data were acquired, covering the identical anatomical region of the CT. The PET scans were reconstructed with ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) algorithms. The tomographs results were validated for a proper quantification and quality of the images recorded.

To establish reference ‘input function’ curves with consistent peak activity and AUC, dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE)-CT Scanning was performed with a 1 s Gantry rotation 120 kV, 350 mA every 6 s for 4 min on a GE Discovery 610 PET-CT system.
The phantom was set up on the CT couch as shown in Figure 4. A Harvard Syringe Injection Pump was attached to the system and connected to each of the two mixing chambers, one for the input function and one for background. A 60 cc syringe was loaded with a 1:1 mixture of 370 mgI/mL Iodine based contrast agent and water. The flow rate through the system was set to 600 mL/min. Injection of the contrast agent occurred at 0.5 mL/s for 50 s. A replicate experiment was performed to produce error bars (range of measurements n = 2).