Kinetic 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging of hepatocellular carcinoma: a dual input four-compartment model

Abstract Background The endoplasmic reticulum plays an important role in glucose metabolism and has not been explored in the kinetic estimation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) via 18F-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose PET/CT. Methods A dual-input four-compartment (4C) model, regarding endoplasmic reticulum was preliminarily used for kinetic estimation to differentiate 28 tumours from background liver tissue from 24 patients with HCC. Moreover, parameter images of the 4C model were generated from one patient with negative findings on conventional metabolic PET/CT. Results Compared to the dual-input three-compartment (3C) model, the 4C model has better fitting quality, a close transport rate constant (K 1) and a dephosphorylation rate constant (k 6/k 4), and a different removal rate constant (k 2) and phosphorylation rate constant (k 3) in HCC and background liver tissue. The K 1, k 2, k 3, and hepatic arterial perfusion index (HPI) from the 4C model and k 3, HPI, and volume fraction of blood (V b ) from the 3C model were significantly different between HCC and background liver tissues (all P