Quantitative assessment of ventilation-perfusion relationships with gallium-68 positron emission tomography/computed tomography imaging in lung cancer patients

• Main Authors: Callahan, J. (Author), Hardcastle, N. (Author), Hofman, M.S (Author), Le Roux, P.-Y (Author), Li, Z. (Author), Siva, S. (Author), Yamamoto, T. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ireland Ltd 2022
• Subjects: Lung cancer; Lung function; Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT); Ventilation/perfusion
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher
• Physical Description: 5
• ISBN: 24056316 (ISSN)
• DOI: 10.1016/j.phro.2022.03.005

Pulmonary functional imaging has demonstrated potential to improve thoracic radiotherapy. The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to quantify ventilation/perfusion relationships in lung cancer patients using a new functional imaging approach, gallium-68 (68Ga)-positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT); and 2) to compare ventilation/perfusion matching with diffusing capacity of the lung for carbon monoxide (DLCO). Voxel-wise correlations between ventilation and perfusion varied widely among 19 patients (range: 0.26–0.88). 68Ga-PET/CT-measured percent gas exchanging lung volume was moderately correlated with DLCO (≤0.59). Our findings suggested that 68Ga-PET/CT ventilation/perfusion imaging provided complementary information and a reasonable surrogate for gas exchange in lung cancer patients. © 2022 The Authors