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This study aimed to propose a PET\/CT phantom designed by National Institute of Metrology (NIM), China, which is capable of simultaneously testing the performance of PET and CT systems, and to evaluate the quality of imaging.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title><jats:p>The phantom developed in the present study, the NIM PET\/CT phantom, is composed of a PET imaging module and a CT imaging module, and these modules are connected together through bolts, which can simultaneously measure the imaging performance of PET and CT systems. Hot spheres were filled with 4:1 sphere-to-background activity concentration using<jats:sup>18<\/jats:sup>F-fluorodeoxyglucose (<jats:sup>18<\/jats:sup>F-FDG), and cold spheres were filled with non-radioactive water. We compared the results of imaging obtained from the NIM PET\/CT phantom and the NEMA IEC Body phantom to assess their diagnostic efficacy. In order to evaluate the generalization ability of the NIM PET\/CT phantom, three different PET\/CT systems were used to scan on the same scanning protocol. To evaluate the effects of image reconstruction algorithms on image quality assessment, ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM), OSEM-point-spread function (PSF), OSEM-TOF, and OSEM-PSF-TOF algorithms were employed.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results<\/jats:title><jats:p>The imaging quality of the NIM PET\/CT phantom and the NEMA IEC Body phantom was relatively consistent. The NIM PET\/CT phantom could detect 7\u00a0mm spheres without influencing the imaging quality. It was found that PSF reconstruction exhibited to reduce the speed of convergence, the contrast and background variability of spheres (13\u201328\u00a0mm) were significantly improved after two iterations. In addition to improve the image contrast and background variability, TOF could markedly improve the overall image quality and instrument detection limit. TOF-PSF could noticeably reduce noise level, enhance imaging details, and improve quality of imaging.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title><jats:p>The results showed that in comparison with the NEMA IEC Body phantom, the NIM PET\/CT phantom outperformed in evaluating the PET image quality of micro-lesions and the performance parameters of CT.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1186\/s12880-021-00683-4","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,11,8]],"date-time":"2021-11-08T17:19:45Z","timestamp":1636391985000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["A NIM PET\/CT phantom for evaluating the PET image quality of micro-lesions and the performance parameters of CT"],"prefix":"10.1186","volume":"21","author":[{"given":"Shujie","family":"Lu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Peng","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chengwei","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jie","family":"Sun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wenli","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Pu","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,11,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"683_CR1","volume-title":"Positron emission tomography","author":"DL Bailey","year":"2015","unstructured":"Bailey DL, Townsend DW, Valk PE, Maisey MN. 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