Estimation of internal absorbed dose of L-[methyl-11C]methionine using whole-body positron emission tomography.

L-[Methyl-11C]-methionine (11C-methionine) is proposed as a useful radiotracer for tumour diagnosis. Human biodistribution data of cumulated activities and absorbed doses estimated by the MIRD (medical internal radiation dosimetry) method for 11C-methionine are not available in the literature. In this study we measured the organ activity for 11C-methionine by using whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) and estimated the absorbed doses to 25 organs by the MIRD method. Whole-body dynamic PET scans were performed on five normal volunteers to measure the time course of the organ activity concentration (activity/volume) after intravenous administration of 11C-methionine. Cumulated activities of the ten source organs were calculated from the time-activity curves, obtained from the dynamic PET data. Absorbed dose estimates were performed by the MIRD method for the Caucasian reference man and for the Japanese reference man. The organs which received the highest absorbed doses for the Caucasian reference man were found to be the bladder wall (2.7x10(-2) mGy/MBq), the pancreas (1.9x10(-2) mGy/ MBq), the liver (1.8x10(-2) mGy/MBq) and the kidney (1.1x10(-2) mGy/MBq). The effective doses for the Caucasian reference man and the Japanese reference man were calculated as 5.2x10(-3) and 5.0x10(-3) mSv/MBq, respectively.