Image Quality and Lesion Detectability in Low-dose Pediatric F-FDG Scans Using Total-body PET/CT

Overview

Journal Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging

Specialties Biophysics
Nuclear Medicine
Radiology

Date 2021 Mar 19

PMID 33738519

Citations 34

Authors

Yu-Mo Zhao

Ying-He Li

Tao Chen

Wei-Guang Zhang

Lin-Hao Wang

Jiatai Feng

Chenwei Li

Xu Zhang

Wei Fan

Ying-Ying Hu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the effects of dose reduction on image quality and lesion detectability of oncological F-FDG total-body PET/CT in pediatric oncological patients and explore the minimum threshold of administered tracer activity.

Methods: A total of 33 pediatric patients (weight 8.5-58.5 kg; age 0.8-17.6 years) underwent total-body PET/CT using uEXPLORER scanner with an F-FDG administered dose of 3.7 MBq/kg and an acquisition time of 600 s were retrospectively enrolled. Low-dose images (0.12-1.85 MBq/kg) were simulated by truncating the list-mode PET data to reducing count density. Subjective image quality was rated on a 5-point scale. Semi-quantitative uptake metrics for low-dose images were assessed using region-of-interest (ROI) analysis of healthy liver and suspected lesions and were compared with full-dose images. The micro-lesion detectability was compared among the dose-dependent PET images.

Results: Our analysis shows that sufficient subjective image quality and lesion conspicuity could be maintained down to 1/30th (0.12 MBq/kg) of the administered dose of F-FDG, where good image quality scores were given to 1/2- and 1/10- dose groups. The image noise was significantly more deranged than the overall quality and lesion conspicuity in 1/30- to 1/10-dose groups (all p < 0.05). With reduced doses, quantitative analysis of ROIs showed that SUV and SD in the liver increased gradually (p < 0.05), but SUV in the lesions and lesion-to-background ratio (LBR) showed no significant deviation down to 1/30-dose. One hundred percent of the F-FDG-avid micro-lesions identified in full-dose images were localized down to 1/15-dose images, while 97% of the lesion were localized in 1/30-dose images.

Conclusion: The total-body PET/CT might significantly decrease the administered dose upon maintaining the image quality and diagnostic performance of micro-lesions in pediatric patients. Data suggests that using total-body PET/CT, optimal image quality could be achieved with an administered dose-reduction down to 1/10-dose (0.37 MBq/kg).

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