Jun S, Park JG, Seo Y. Accurate FDG PET tumor segmentation using the peritumoral halo layer method: a study in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
Cancer Imaging 2018;
18:35. [PMID:
30257714 PMCID:
PMC6158888 DOI:
10.1186/s40644-018-0169-1]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2018] [Accepted: 09/20/2018] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Background
In a previous study, FDG PET tumor segmentation (SegPHL) using the peritumoral halo layer (PHL) was more reliable than fixed threshold methods in patients with thyroid cancer. We performed this study to validate the reliability and accuracy of the PHL method in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCCs), which can be larger and more heterogeneous than thyroid cancers.
Methods
A total of 121 ESCC patients (FDG avid = 85 (70.2%); FDG non-avid = 36 (29.8%)) were enrolled in this study. In FDG avid ESCCs, metabolic tumor length (ML) using SegPHL (MLPHL), fixed SUV 2.5 threshold (ML2.5), and fixed 40% of maximum SUV (SUVmax) (ML40%) were measured. Regression and Bland-Altman analyses were performed to evaluate associations between ML, endoscopic tumor length (EL), and pathologic tumor length (PL). A comparison test was performed to evaluate the absolute difference between ML and PL. Correlation with tumor threshold determined by the PHL method (PHL tumor threshold) and SUVmax was evaluated.
Results
MLPHL, ML2.5, and ML40% correlated well with EL (R2 = 0.6464, 0.5789, 0.3321, respectively; p < 0.001) and PL (R2 = 0.8778, 0.8365, 0.6266, respectively; p < 0.001). However, ML2.5 and ML40% showed significant proportional error with regard to PL; there was no significant error between MLPHL and PL. MLPHL showed the smallest standard deviation on Bland-Altman analyses. The absolute differences between ML and PL were significantly smaller for MLPHL and ML40% than for ML2.5 (p < 0.0001). The PHL tumor threshold showed an inverse correlation with SUVmax (σ = − 0.923, p < 0.0001).
Conclusions
SegPHL was more accurate than fixed threshold methods in ESCC. The PHL tumor threshold was adjusted according to SUVmax of ESCC.
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