1. Quantitative Assessments of Tumor Activity in a General Oncologic PET/CT Population: Which Metric Minimizes Tracer Uptake Time Dependence?
- Author
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Ince S, Laforest R, Itani M, Prasad V, Derenoncourt PR, Crandall JP, Ashrafinia S, Smith AM, Wahl RL, and Fraum TJ
- Subjects
- Humans, Male, Female, Middle Aged, Aged, Time Factors, Reproducibility of Results, Adult, Fluorodeoxyglucose F18, Biological Transport, Prospective Studies, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted methods, Radioactive Tracers, Aged, 80 and over, Radiopharmaceuticals pharmacokinetics, Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography methods, Neoplasms diagnostic imaging, Neoplasms metabolism
- Abstract
In oncologic PET, the SUV and standardized uptake ratio (SUR) of a viable tumor generally increase during the postinjection period. In contrast, the net influx rate ( K
i ), which is derived from dynamic PET data, should remain relatively constant. Uptake-time-corrected SUV (cSUV) and SUR (cSUR) have been proposed as uptake-time-independent, static alternatives to Ki Our primary aim was to quantify the intrascan repeatability of Ki , SUV, cSUV, SUR, and cSUR among malignant lesions on PET/CT. An exploratory aim was to assess the ability of cSUR to estimate Ki Methods: This prospective, single-center study enrolled adults undergoing standard-of-care oncologic PET/CT. SUV and Ki images were reconstructed from dynamic PET data obtained before (∼35-50 min after injection) and after (∼75-90 min after injection) standard-of-care imaging. Tumors were manually segmented. Quantitative metrics were extracted. cSUVs and cSURs were calculated for a 60-min postinjection reference uptake time. The magnitude of the intrascan test-retest percent change (test-retest |%Δ|) was calculated. Coefficients of determination ( R2 ) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were also computed. Differences between metrics were assessed via the Wilcoxon signed-rank test (α, 0.05). Results: This study enrolled 78 subjects; 41 subjects (mean age, 63.8 y; 24 men) with 116 lesions were analyzed. For both tracers, SUVmax and maximum SUR (SURmax ) had large early-to-late increases (i.e., poor intrascan repeatability). Among [18 F]FDG-avid lesions ( n = 93), there were no differences in intrascan repeatability (median test-retest |%Δ|; ICC) between the maximum Ki ( Ki ,max ) (13%; 0.97) and either the maximum cSUV (cSUVmax ) (12%, P = 0.90; 0.96) or the maximum cSUR (cSURmax ) (13%, P = 0.67; 0.94). For DOTATATE-avid lesions ( n = 23), there were no differences in intrascan repeatability between the Ki ,max (11%; 0.98) and either the cSUVmax (13%, P = 0.41; 0.98) or the cSURmax (11%, P = 0.08; 0.94). The SUVmax , cSUVmax , SURmax , and cSURmax were all strongly correlated with the Ki ,max for both [18 F]FDG ( R2 , 0.81-0.92) and DOTATATE ( R2 , 0.88-0.96), but the cSURmax provided the best agreement with the Ki ,max across early-to-late time points for [18 F]FDG (ICC, 0.69-0.75) and DOTATATE (ICC, 0.90-0.91). Conclusion: Ki ,max , cSUVmax , and cSURmax had low uptake time dependence compared with SUVmax and SURmax The Ki ,max can be predicted from cSURmax ., (© 2024 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.)- Published
- 2024
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