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Volumetric assessment of recurrent or progressive gliomas: comparison between F-DOPA PET and perfusion-weighted MRI

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European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

To compare the diagnostic information obtained with 6-[18F]-fluoro-l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (F-DOPA) PET and relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) maps in recurrent or progressive glioma.

Methods

All patients with recurrent or progressive glioma referred for F-DOPA imaging at our institution between May 2010 and May 2014 were retrospectively included, provided that macroscopic disease was visible on conventional MRI images and that rCBV maps were available for comparison. The final analysis included 50 paired studies (44 patients). After image registration, automatic tumour segmentation of both sets of images was performed using the average signal in a large reference VOI including grey and white matter multiplied by 1.6. Tumour volumes identified by both modalities were compared and their spatial congruence calculated. The distances between F-DOPA uptake and rCBV hot spots, tumour-to-brain ratios (TBRs) and normalized histograms were also computed.

Results

On visual inspection, 49 of the 50 F-DOPA and 45 of the 50 rCBV studies were classified as positive. The tumour volume delineated using F-DOPA (F-DOPAvol 1.6) greatly exceeded that of rCBV maps (rCBVvol 1.6). The median F-DOPAvol 1.6 and rCBVvol 1.6 were 11.44 ml (range 0 – 220.95 ml) and 1.04 ml (range 0 – 26.30 ml), respectively (p < 0.00001). Overall, the median overlapping volume was 0.27 ml, resulting in a spatial congruence of 1.38 % (range 0 – 39.22 %). The mean hot spot distance was 27.17 mm (±16.92 mm). F-DOPA uptake TBR was significantly higher than rCBV TBR (1.76 ± 0.60 vs. 1.15 ± 0.52, respectively; p < 0.0001). The histogram analysis showed that F-DOPA provided better separation of tumour from background. In 6 of the 50 studies (12 %), however, physiological uptake in the striatum interfered with tumour delineation.

Conclusion

The information provided by F-DOPA PET and rCBV maps are substantially different. Image interpretation is easier and a larger tumour extent is identified on F-DOPA PET images than on rCBV maps. The clinical impact of such differences needs to be explored in future studies.

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Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflicts of interest

None.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the study were in accordance with the standards of the institutional ethical committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Author notes

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Unit of Nuclear Medicine, Sant’Andrea Hospital, Rome, Italy

      Francesco Cicone, Annalisa Papa & Francesco Scopinaro

    2. Department of Surgical and Medical Sciences and translational Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Rome, Italy

      Francesco Cicone, Giuseppe Minniti, Annalisa Papa, Claudia Scaringi & Francesco Scopinaro

    3. Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Centre Juelich, Juelich, Germany

      Francesco Cicone, Christian P. Filss, Norbert Galldiks, N. Jon Shah & Karl-Josef Langen

    4. Department of Nuclear Medicine, RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Aachen, Germany

      Christian P. Filss & Karl-Josef Langen

    5. Unit of Radiotherapy, Sant’Andrea Hospital, Rome, Italy

      Giuseppe Minniti & Claudia Scaringi

    6. Unit of Neuroradiology, Sant’Andrea Hospital, Rome, Italy

      Camilla Rossi-Espagnet & Alessandro Bozzao

    7. Department of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Sensory Organs (Ne.S.M.O.S.), Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Rome, Italy

      Camilla Rossi-Espagnet & Alessandro Bozzao

    8. Department of Neurology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

      Norbert Galldiks

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    1. Francesco Cicone
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    Correspondence to Francesco Cicone.

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    Francesco Cicone and Christian P. Filss contributed equally to this work.

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    Cicone, F., Filss, C.P., Minniti, G. et al. Volumetric assessment of recurrent or progressive gliomas: comparison between F-DOPA PET and perfusion-weighted MRI. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 42, 905–915 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-015-3018-5

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