THE EUROPEAN SPINE PHANTOM - A TOOL FOR STANDARDIZATION AND QUALITY-CONTROL IN SPINAL BONE-MINERAL MEASUREMENTS BY DXA AND QCT

The lack of standardization in bone mineral measurements of the lumbar spine and other skeletal sites is generally recognized as an importan t and unresolved issue, We report and discuss efforts at standardizati on and cross-calibration of DXA and QCT equipment, We have designed an d tested a geometrically defined, semi-anthropomorphic phantom, the Eu ropean Spine Phantom (ESP), It contains a spine insert consisting of t hree vertebrae of increasing bone mineral densities and thicknesses of cortical structures; the respective parameters are given in tabular f orm for the final phantom design, Results for cross-calibration with t he ESP compare well with patient results. Measurements on the first 30 phantoms confirmed that the ESP can be manufactured with a variation of about 1%. We conclude that the ESP is suitable for daily quality as surance, cross-calibration of instruments and universal standardizatio n. The ESP was used to establish standardized BMD (sBMD) units for DXA equipment going into effect in late 1995. Its acceptance by manufactu rers as a calibration standard for DXA and QCT measurements appears im minent,