Calculation of Gallium-68 Dose Factors for [68Ga] DOTATATE Injected Patients: A Comparison with OLINDA Database

Abstract

[68Ga] DOTATATE as a radiolabeled tracer is used for in vivo detection of neuroendocrine tumors in the PET/CT examinations. This study aims to calculate S-values in various organs in a voxelized-based Monte Carlo simulation approach for each patient individually. PET/CT images of 9 patients suspected of neuroendocrine cancer were acquired 60 minutes after injection of [68Ga] DOTATATE. After reshaping and registering CT images to the size of PET images, GATE/GEANT4 Monte Carlo (MC) toolkit was used with two inputs of CT images as voxelized attenuation map and PET images as a voxelized activity map for the calculation of the different organs dose. Voxelized dose maps were extracted in the target organs for different source organs. S-value volume histogram and absolute S-values based on the MIRD formalism were calculated. The highest S-values were observed for spleen, bladder, kidneys, liver, pituitary, and the lung with 6.26E-05 ± 1.47E-05, 5.17E-05 ± 3.08E-05, 3.41E-05 ± 7.68E-06, 2.08E-05 ± 4.12E-06, 1.62E-05 ± 5.74E-06 and 8.47E-06 ± 2.47E-06 mGy/MBq.S, respectively. The difference between the amounts of the calculated S-values and those presented in OLINDA software is mainly related to the anatomical difference of the patients with the standard phantom in OLINEDA software. This study showed that patient-specific dosimetry is necessary to calculate S-values.