A New Tool for Extracting Static and Dynamic Parameters from [[sup.18]F]F-DOPA PET/CT in Pediatric Gliomas

• Published in: Journal of clinical medicine Vol. 13; no. 20
• Main Authors: Mureddu, Michele, Funck, Thomas, Morana, Giovanni, Rossi, Andrea, Ramaglia, Antonia, Milanaccio, Claudia, Verrico, Antonio, Bottoni, Gianluca, Fiz, Francesco, Piccardo, Arnoldo, Fato, Marco Massimo, Trò, Rosella
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 01.10.2024
• Subjects: CT imaging; Diagnosis; Gliomas; Methods; PET imaging; Radioisotopes; Tumors in children; Italy
• ISSN: 2077-0383; 2077-0383
• DOI: 10.3390/jcm13206252

Background/Objectives : PET imaging with [[sup.18] F]F-DOPA has demonstrated high potential for the evaluation and management of pediatric brain gliomas. Manual extraction of PET parameters is time-consuming, lacks reproducibility, and varies with operator experience. Methods : In this study, we tested whether a semi-automated image processing framework could overcome these limitations. Pediatric patients with available static and/or dynamic [[sup.18] F]F-DOPA PET studies were evaluated retrospectively. We developed a Python software to automate clinical index calculations, including preprocessing to delineate tumor volumes from structural MRI, accounting for lesions with low [[sup.18] F]F-DOPA uptake. A total of 73 subjects with treatment-naïve low- and high-grade gliomas, who underwent brain MRI within two weeks of [[sup.18] F]F-DOPA PET, were included and analyzed. Static analysis was conducted on all subjects, while dynamic analysis was performed on 32 patients. Results : For 68 subjects, the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient for T/S between manual and ground truth segmentation was 0.91. Using our tool, ICC improved to 0.94. Our method demonstrated good reproducibility in extracting static tumor-to-striatum ratio (p = 0.357); however, significant differences were observed in tumor slope (p < 0.05). No significant differences were found in time-to-peak (p = 0.167) and striatum slope (p = 0.36). Conclusions : Our framework aids in analyzing [[sup.18] F]F-DOPA PET images of pediatric brain tumors by automating clinical score extraction, simplifying segmentation and Time Activity Curve extraction, reducing user variability, and enhancing reproducibility.