FDG-PET Radiomics for Response Monitoring in Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Treated with Radiation Therapy

• Main Authors: Montserrat Carles, Tobias Fechter, Gianluca Radicioni, Tanja Schimek-Jasch, Sonja Adebahr, Constantinos Zamboglou, Nils H. Nicolay, Luis Martí-Bonmatí, Ursula Nestle, Anca L. Grosu, Dimos Baltas, Michael Mix, Eleni Gkika
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Cancers
• Subjects: lung cancer; PET radiomics; FDG monitoring and retrospectively gated 4D PET/CT
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6694/13/4/814

The aim of this study is to identify clinically relevant image feature (IF) changes during chemoradiation and evaluate their efficacy in predicting treatment response. Patients with non-small-cell lung cancer<b> (</b>NSCLC) were enrolled in two prospective trials (STRIPE, PET-Plan). We evaluated 48 patients who underwent static (3D) and retrospectively-respiratory-gated 4D PET/CT scans before treatment and a 3D scan during or after treatment. Our proposed method rejects IF changes due to intrinsic variability. The IF variability observed across 4D PET is employed as a patient individualized normalization factor to emphasize statistically relevant IF changes during treatment. Predictions of overall survival (OS), local recurrence (LR) and distant metastasis (DM) were evaluated. From 135 IFs, only 17 satisfied the required criteria of being normally distributed across 4D PET and robust between 3D and 4D images. Changes during treatment in the area-under-the-curve of the cumulative standard-uptake-value histogram (δ_AUCCSH) within primary tumor discriminated (AUC = 0.87, Specificity = 0.78) patients with and without LR. The resulted prognostic model was validated with a different segmentation method (AUC = 0.83) and in a different patient cohort (AUC = 0.63). The quantification of tumor FDG heterogeneity by δ_AUCCSH during chemoradiation correlated with the incidence of local recurrence and might be recommended for monitoring treatment response in patients with NSCLC.