Development of a simulator with thyroid nodules for nuclear medicine

Abstract

Nuclear medicine is one of the methods used to diagnose diseases by the use of ionizing radiation. In this method, a radioisotope is injected into the patient and is directed to the body that should be evaluated. After this the patient is examined by a scintigraphic chamber, which will result in an image to view the organs evaluated. To verify the ability to view the chambers are made of quality control tests using simulators with objects that may have characteristics similar to that of human organs and systems. In this work, an object was made of acrylic thyroid simulator used for quality control in scintillation chamber for use in teaching morphological analysis of the thyroid. To simulate the thyroid nodules were included in the simulator of acrylic columns with different diameters. The analysis of thyroid scintigraphy was also used for quality control tests. These tests were conducted in scintigraphic chamber GE Millennium MG. In quality control was verified the spatial resolution of the equipment. The radiopharmaceutical used was 99mTc. The phantom image was closer to an image with the presence of thyroid nodules. The simulator thyroid tested in this work can now be used for quality control tests in other scintillation chambers, enabling students and professionals in nuclear medicine know more about the objects simulators.