Deformation Effect on SUVmax Changes in Thoracic Tumors Using 4-D PET/CT Scan

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 8; no. 3; p. e58886
• Main Authors: Huang, Tzung-Chi, Wang, Yao-Ching
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 14.03.2013; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adult; Cancer; Computed tomography; Deformation effects; Engineering; Esophageal cancer; Esophagus; Female; Four-Dimensional Computed Tomography; Humans; Image acquisition; Image reconstruction; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Localization; Lung cancer; Lung diseases; Male; Medical imaging; Medicine; Middle Aged; Movement; Multimodal Imaging; Optical flow (image analysis); Patients; Positron emission; Positron-Emission Tomography; Radiation; Radiation therapy; Respiration; Respiratory-Gated Imaging Techniques; Thoracic Neoplasms - diagnostic imaging; Thoracic Neoplasms - physiopathology; Thorax; Tomography; Tomography, X-Ray Computed; Tumors
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058886

Respiratory motion blurs the standardized uptake value (SUV) and leads to a further signal reduction and changes in the SUV maxima. 4D PET can provide accurate tumor localization as a function of the respiratory phase in PET/CT imaging. We investigated thoracic tumor motion by respiratory 4D CT and assessed its deformation effect on the SUV changes in 4D PET imaging using clinical patient data. Twelve radiation oncology patients with thoracic cancer, including five lung cancer patients and seven esophageal cancer patients, were recruited to the present study. The 4D CT and PET image sets were acquired and reconstructed for 10 respiratory phases across the whole respiratory cycle. The optical flow method was applied to the 4D CT data to calculate the maximum displacements of the tumor motion in respiration. Our results show that increased tumor motion has a significant degree of association with the SUVmax loss for lung cancer. The results also show that the SUVmax loss has a higher correlation with tumors located at lower lobe of lung or at lower regions of esophagus.