Rationale & Purpose

As the capabilities of computer hardware and software progresses, the importance of standardized imaging raw data is becoming increasingly relevant. While the DICOM standard is widely used as a standard for nuclear medicine PET and SPECT images, no agreed format exists for the respective PET and SPECT imaging raw data. In addition, all current scanner vendors raw data formats are proprietary and differ to a large extent in order to accommodate different architectures, data handling conventions and optimize processing strategies.

An international working group consortium comprised of nuclear medicine imaging experts from academia and industry was formed in 2022 to propose new standardized PET and SPECT raw data formats in nuclear medicine. Efforts involve establishing (i) the key informational elements to efficiently include in the raw data standard, (ii) well-defined data container formats, and (iii) development of tools to support a broad range of possible use cases of the standard in research and clinic.

An important feature of the proposal is the use of a meta-language (called Yardl) for defining the standards structure and protocols for accessing, transferring, and storing data, thus allowing the logical separation of the data elements from the data container description. All the components of the standardized raw data formats, including test datasets and the tools for supporting basic use cases of the standard will be be publicly available as open source.

The initiative’s effort is ongoing, and any interest, constructive feedback, and support from the greater nuclear medicine and medical imaging community is welcomed. We hope that this standard will facilitate a new paradigm for nuclear medicine imaging innovation, including new opportunities for inter-scanner and inter-vendor harmonization and AI applications, as well as aide in the advancement of novel PET and SPECT imaging applications and analysis tools.