Dosimetry for Radiopharmaceutical Therapy: Current Practices and Commercial Resources

With the ongoing dramatic growth of radiopharmaceutical therapy, research and development in internal radiation dosimetry continue to advance both at academic medical centers and in industry. The basic paradigm for patient-specific dosimetry includes administration of a pretreatment tracer activity of the therapeutic radiopharmaceutical; measurement of its time-dependent biodistribution; definition of the pertinent anatomy; integration of the measured time-activity data to derive source-region time-integrated activities; calculation of the tumor, organ-at-risk, and/or whole-body absorbed doses; and prescription of the therapeutic administered activity. This paper provides an overview of the state of the art of patient-specific dosimetry for radiopharmaceutical therapy, including current methods and commercially available software and other resources.