Improving in vivo calibration phantoms

Anthropomorphic phantoms have been the basis for quantification of radioactive material in the body using in vivo measurements. The types of phantoms used and the degree of anthropomorphic detail vary depending on the counting application, the radioactive material to be measured, phantom availability and cost. Consequently, measurement results for the same types of radioactive material from different facilities are not always comparable. At a February 1990 meeting at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the need to develop the gold standards'' or primary reference standards for in vivo phantoms was discussed in detail. The consensus of the attendees at the meeting was that the state of the art in phantoms was adequate as a starting point and that there was no need to start phantom development from scratch. In particular, the torso phantom developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and its commercial progeny, the bottle manikin absorption (BOMAB) phantom and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Standard N44.3 thyroid phantom, were identified as the starting points for the development of the primary reference standards. Working groups at the meeting subsequently recommended design improvements for the existing phantom designs. The implementation of these recommendations is the subject of this paper