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Basic Science Investigations |
1 Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York
2 Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York
3 Department of Nuclear Medicine, Philips-University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
4 Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York
5 Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
| ABSTRACT |
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Key Words: 3D-internal dosimetry patient-specific dosimetry thyroid cancer 124I PET
| INTRODUCTION |
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In this study, we used 124I PET imaging (16,17) in a fully 3D imaging-based dosimetry method in which multiple PET images defined the spatial distribution of radioactivity at different times after administration of the radiopharmaceutical. We expected the approach to provide more accurate estimation of the cumulated activity distribution because the assumptions made using the SPECT planar approach described above were not necessary. Furthermore PET provides a greater quantitative accuracy compared with SPECT; correspondingly, we expected the output provided by 3D imaging-based dosimetry (dose-volume histograms [DVHs]) (18) and images of the absorbed dose distribution) to yield absorbed dose information that would better correlate with tumor response and normal organ toxicity. We examine the feasibility of the method, retrospectively, using data collected from patients with thyroid cancer.
Thyroid cancer therapy using radioiodine was perhaps the first example of patient-specific treatment planning for radionuclide therapy. The method, originally described by Benua and Leeper (19,20), required administration of a tracer amount of 131I followed by sequential whole-body counting and blood sample collection to project the absorbed dose to blood and the radioactivity retention in the lungs per unit administered activity. This information was then used to constrain the therapeutic administered activity so that the blood absorbed dose would not exceed 200 cGy and, if the patient exhibited diffuse lung uptake, the 48-h lung retention would not exceed
3 GBq (80 mCi). These limits were based on dose versus toxicity information obtained from an extensive collection of prior patient treatments. It is important to note that this straightforward and clinically implementable approach has been generally successful in thyroid cancer therapy, with failures arising primarily when tumor cells lose the ability to concentrate iodine. The retrospective analyses provided in this article are intended to demonstrate feasibility of a dosimetry methodology best applied to radioimmunotherapy or radiopeptide targeted therapy rather than to suggest that a fully 3D, patient-specific methodology is required in radioiodine therapy of thyroid cancer.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Whole-body PET scans were collected on the General Electric Advance PET scanner. To image the body from the head to midthigh, five to seven 15-cm axial fields were used. Emission scans were acquired for 6 min per field and transmission scans, used for attenuation correction, for 3 min per field. The total imaging time per patient was approximately 1 h. Standard clinical software available on the Advance scanner was used to generate ordered-subsets expectation maximization (OSEM) reconstructed images (4.3-mm isotropic voxels).
The software package, Multiple Image Analysis Utility (MIAU) (21), was used to process the reconstructed PET images for 3D-ID dosimetry calculations. The 3D images were first converted into a 4-dimensional image set where the fourth dimension provided an index for the time after injection. The resulting image sets, describing the 124I activity concentrations at each time point, were converted to corresponding images of the 131I activity concentrations. The method implemented in MIAU to accomplish this is described by the following equation:
![]() | (Eq. 1) |
124 = decay rate of 124I = ln(2)/4.18 d;
131 = decay rate of 131I = ln(2)/8.04 d; and A131(x,y,z,t) = 131I activity concentration at positions x, y, and z at time t. Equation 1 is based on the assumption that the biologic half-lives of 124I and 131I are identical. Because both decay by ß-emission and because the total particulate energy emitted by 124I is very similar to that of 131I (2.9 vs. 3.0 x 1016 J, respectively), this assumption is reasonable; the difference in half-lives translates to a difference in initial dose rates, which is also the case when tracer levels of 131I are used to predict therapeutic 131I kinetics. The 131I-equivalent images, at each point in time, were then registered to each other using MIAU. As has been previously described (22), the registration method implemented in MIAU is semiautomated; the user identifies anatomic landmarks appearing in the 3 orthogonal views of the display software. MIAU uses appropriate translation rotation and scaling transformations to align the 2 images by matching the selected anatomic landmarks; alternatively, the user may manually scale, translate, and rotate the images by providing parameter values. When no anatomic landmarks were visible, the corresponding transmission images were registered, as described above, to provide the transformation parameters, which were then applied to the emission images.
To obtain 3D cumulated activity images, the registered image sets were integrated, voxel by voxel, over time (22). In general, if the number of imaging time points were <5 (as was the case for all patients reported here), a numeric (Simpsons) integration was performed starting from the first time point and ending at the last measured time point. Integration beyond the last data point was performed by analytically integrating a monoexponential function. The exponential rate was determined by fitting the last 2 imaging time points to an exponential expression. If the decay-corrected exponential rate was positive or zero, indicating uptake of activity over time in a particular voxel, the physical decay rate of 131I was used in the analytic expression. Otherwise, the fitted decay rate was used. The algorithm is described by the following set of equations:
![]() | (Eq. 2) |
xyz = the fitted biologic clearance or uptake rate obtained at positions x, y, and z;
p = the physical decay rate of 131I; ti = the first imaging time point; tf = the last imaging time point; and Stitf denotes numeric integration between ti and tf. Absorbed dose maps were obtained using 3D-ID. A previously published 131I point kernel (23), modified to include local deposition of electron energy, was used in a point-kernel-based calculation. Tumor-specific absorbed dose parameters were obtained by drawing contours around tumors seen on the 124I PET emission images and then transposing them to the absorbed dose images; diffuse lung disease, or foci of activity that were too small for accurate contour drawing (e.g., no greater than 45 voxels or 0.4 cm3), were not included in the individual tumor analysis. The volume for each tumor-specific contour drawn above was obtained using 3D-ID and used to examine the tumor volume versus absorbed dose relationship. Tumor and subregion contours were drawn manually or by using a seed-growing algorithm, available in 3D-ID, that implements an adaptive thresholding algorithm developed by Erdi et al. (24). In selected tumors, which showed a highly nonuniform absorbed dose distribution, contours were drawn around selected foci of activity and kinetic parameters for individual foci within the tumor were compared with the overall tumor kinetics. The comparison was made by calculating the subregion cumulated activity using whole tumor kinetic parameters and then scaling this for each subregion according to the activity concentration within each subregion obtained at different imaging times. The percentage difference in cumulated activity values was then equivalent to the percent difference in absorbed doses.
| RESULTS |
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| DISCUSSION |
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As shown previously (12,13,15,30), 3D-ID provides images of the spatial distribution of absorbed dose. Isodose contours drawn over the images can be used to provide information regarding the absorbed dose distribution within the tumor volume. Importantly, because the dose calculation is voxel based, this information does not require tumor volume segmentation or estimation of tumor mass. Tumor volume segmentation is, however, required to obtain the mean, minimum, and maximum absorbed dose over the tumor volume as well as a DVH depicting the absorbed dose distribution in the tumor. The latter is particularly useful because it could be the starting point for radiobiologic interpretation and modeling of the dose distribution for response assessment (31,32).
Although in the patient population studied, there was a 4-fold difference in 131I activity administered for therapy, the large variation in absorbed dose parameters listed in Table 1 was not due to differences in patient-administered activity. The maximum mean absorbed dose was delivered to a 5.3-cm3 tumor in patient 7, who received 11 GBq, whereas the minimum absorbed dose was to a 0.4-cm3 tumor in patient 12, who was administered 15 GBq. The spatial variation in tumor absorbed dose likewise could not be explained by differences in administered activity. The minimum intratumoral dose of 0.3 Gy was delivered to a 0.8-cm3 tumor in patient 1, who also received 15 GBq of 131I, whereas the maximum intratumoral absorbed dose of 4,000 Gy was delivered to <1.5% of the same 5.3-cm3 tumor volume that received the maximum mean tumor absorbed dose (patient 7). Although the mean and maximum absorbed doses for this tumor were very high, it is important to note that therapeutic efficacy will depend on the minimum absorbed dose delivered to the tumor volume. In the case of the 5.3-cm3 tumor, the minimum absorbed dose was 23 Gy (Fig. 5), which is generally considered to be subtherapeutic for metastatic thyroid carcinoma (33,34).
The potential importance of using fully 3D datasets to derive voxel-based pharmacokinetic parameters for cumulated activity determination is illustrated in the analysis of patient 13 (Figs. 2 5; Table 3). As shown in Figure 3, a transverse slice through the lateral chest wall tumor on the patients right (T2) shows 3 foci of high activity concentration. Twenty hours after administration, the activity concentration in region 1 was 1.5 and 2.6 times higher than that in regions 2 and 3, respectively. The relative increase in activity concentration with time for regions 1 and 2, however, was twice that of region 3 and of the tumor volume as a whole (Fig. 4). Tumor cumulated activity estimates derived by combining planar imaging with a single 3D image set (e.g., SPECT), in which all voxels within a tumor are assigned the same kinetic parameters, would yield absorbed dose variations within tumors that are lower than the actual variations. In the case considered above, a calculation based on a 20-h activity distribution and an uptake rate associated with the overall tumor volume would have underestimated the mean absorbed dose to regions 1 and 2 by 56 and 0.9%, respectively, and overestimated the absorbed dose to region 2 by 0.8%. As shown in Table 3, these under- and overestimates change depending on the time point at which the spatial activity distribution is determined.
The size versus absorbed dose relationship obtained for thyroid cancer metastases does not follow the previously observed relationship for radiolabeled antibodies. This might be expected given the mass difference between a 150,000-Da radiolabeled antibody and 131I. Diffusion of the latter is not susceptible to the forces that a 150,000 molecular weight protein would be, but would be more susceptible to the biology of the lesion and its level of differentiation.
The mean absorbed doses reported in this work may be compared with other recently reported PET-derived values (35,36). In the study by Eschmann et al. (35), longitudinal 124I PET data and a combination of the Marinelli formula (37) and the nodule module available in MIRDOSE3.1 (38) were used to estimate the absorbed dose. Tumor volumes were derived from the PET images. The reported absorbed doses for metastases ranged from 70 to 156 Gy, with reported 131I-administered activities of 0.51.2 GBq compared with 416 GBq administered in the 15 patients analyzed in this study. Although the absolute absorbed dose values are generally consistent with the absorbed dose reported in this work, the dose per administered activity is lower than that reported for the 4 metastatic lesions in reference (35). PET-derived absorbed doses reported by Erdi et al. (36) were obtained by fast Hartley transform convolution of an 131I point kernel. The absorbed dose range of 0.424.4 Gy/GBq reported in the 3 patients studied is within the 0.0849 Gy/GBq range reported in this study.
| CONCLUSION |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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For correspondence or reprints contact: George Sgouros, PhD, 720 Rutland Ave., 220 Ross Research Building, Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University Medical Institute, Baltimore, MD 21205.
E-mail: gsgouros{at}jhmi.edu
| REFERENCES |
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