Computer simulation on reliability of retention index with FDG-PET and optimization of dual-time-point imaging protocol

• Published in: Progress in natural science Vol. 18; no. 8; pp. 931 - 937
• Main Authors: Jia, Rui, Bai, Jing, Wen, Lingfeng, Feng, Dagan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 2008; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Room B209, Building of Medical Science, Beifing 100084, China%School of Information Technologies, University of Sydney, NS W 2006, Australia; Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
• Subjects: PET (positron emission tomography); Reliability; Retention index; ROC (receiver operating characteristic); Simulation; X线检测; 可靠性; 模拟技术; 阳离子; Retention index; Simulation; Reliability; PET (positron emission tomography); ROC (receiver operating characteristic)
• ISSN: 1002-0071
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pnsc.2008.03.004

The inherent noise in positron emission tomography （PET） leads to the instability of quantitative indicators, which may affect the diagnostic accuracy for differentiating malignant and benign lesions in the management of lung cancer. In this paper, the reliability of retention index （RI） is systematically investigated by using computer simulation for the dual-time-point imaging protocol. The area under the receiver operating characteristic （ROC） curve is used to evaluate the optimal protocol. Results demonstrate that the reliability of RI is affected by several factors including noise level, lesion type, and imaging schedule. The RIs with small absolute values suffer from worse reliability than those larger ones. The results of ROC curves show that over delayed second scan cannot help to improve the diagnostic performance further, while an early first scan is expected. The method of optimization based on ROC analysis can be easily extended to comprise as many lesions as possible.