18F-FDG PET/CT heterogeneity quantification through textural features in the era of harmonisation programs: a focus on lung cancer

Abstract

No significant difference was observed between any of the metrics considered (SUV or heterogeneity features) extracted from OSEM and PSF7 reconstructions. Furthermore, the distributions of TF for OSEM and PSF7 reconstructions according to tumour volumes were similar for all ranges of volumes.Conclusion: PSF reconstruction with Gaussian filtering chosen to meet harmonizing standards resulted in similar SUV values and heterogeneity information, compared to OSEM images, which validates its use within the harmonization strategy context. However, unfiltered PSF-reconstructed images also showed higher heterogeneity according to some metrics, as well as a wider range of heterogeneity values than OSEM images, for most of the metrics considered, especially when analysing larger tumours. This suggests that, whenever 3 available, unfiltered PSF images should also be exploited to obtain the most discriminative quantitative heterogeneity features.

Association between textural and morphological tumor indices on baseline PET‐CT and early metabolic response on interim PET‐CT in bulky malignant lymphomas

“…The quantification of heterogeneity is dependent on PET data resolution, and PSF‐corrected images are known to provide parameters with wider ranges of variation than noncorrected images. This is due to better resolution recovery and a slightly lower signal to noise ratio, which directly affect the textural information contained in the image . Our results tend to demonstrate that the textural features extracted from smoothed images remain highly correlated with those extracted from nonsmoothed images and that their prognostic pertinence is robust to image resolution in a range of low to moderate postsmoothing levels.…”

Prediction of cervical cancer recurrence using textural features extracted from 18F-FDG PET images acquired with different scanners

“…Other parameters such as injected activity, time per bed position, field of view could have likewise influenced the radiomic signature in favor of G2 PET device. An independent validation group will be necessary to strengthen the validity of this signature, but the modernization of PET scanners and the standardization of acquisition protocols through accreditations such as the EARL (European Association of nuclear medicine Research Ltd) FDG-PET/CT proposed by the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) are encouraging for performing multi-center PET radiomic studies such as suggested by Lasnon et al [34]. …”

FDG PET/CT for assessing tumour response to immunotherapy

“…However, because MATV [43] and most textural features [44] are sensitive to PET reconstruction parameters, attention should be paid to the PET systems used before pooling data from different centres [45]. …”