Application of NEMA protocols to verify GATE models based on the Digital Biograph Vision and the Biograph Vision Quadra scanners

Purpose The Monte Carlo method is an effective tool to simulate and verify PET systems. Furthermore, it can help in the design and optimization of new medical imaging devices and algorithms. In this framework, the goal of this work is to verify the GATE toolkit performance when applied to simulate two Siemens Healthineers PET scanners: a standard axial field-of-view Biograph Vision scanner and the new long axial field-of-view Biograph Vision Quadra scanner. Methods The simulation toolkit GATE is based on GEANT4, comprising its main functionalities and a set of domain-specific features in the field of medical physics. To accomplish our purpose, the guidelines described in the NEMA NU 2-2018 protocol are reproduced. Then the simulated results are compared to experimental data available in the literature for both PET scanners. The assessment of the models includes different studies of sensitivity, count rate performances, spatial resolution and image quality. These tests are intended to evaluate the image quality of PET devices. Results In the spatial resolution test, relative errors lower than 8% are obtained between the experiments and GATE models. The sensitivity is 17.2 cps/kBq (Vision) and 175.9 cps/kBq (Quadra), representing relative differences with the experiment of 6% and 0.3%, respectively. Deviations from peak NECR are less than 9%. In the Image Quality test, the contrast recovery coefficient for hot spheres, with 8 iterations and 5 subsets, ranges between 57–83% for Vision and 54–86% for Quadra. These values represent a maximum deviation between the simulations and the experiments of 10% for the Quadra scanner. In the case of the Vision scanner, the highest difference is observed for the 10 mm sphere (∼38%) due to the higher contrast recovery of the experiment caused by the Gibbs artifact from the use of PSF reconstruction. Conclusions The results of the simulations have provided evidence of a good agreement between the experimental data and the results obtained with GATE. Thus, this work supports the capability of this MC toolkit to accurately simulate the models of the Vision and Quadra scanners. This study has laid the basis for further research in this field and has identified several areas that could be explored.