The role of the change of tumor metabolic volume (MV) for monitoring cancer therapy in 18F-FDG-PET/CT

Abstract

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Objectives: We performed the current study to investigate the usefulness of MV in monitoring therapeutic effects in various cancers.

Methods: We evaluated the serial change of maximum SUV (SUVmax) and metabolic volume (MV) obtained by 18F-FDG-PET/CT performed in forty-five patients with various cancer. The patients include 14 lung cancers, 12 malignant lymphomas, 7 colon cancer, 5 esophageal cancers and 7 other cancers. The value of MV was calculated in condition at 50% cutoffs. Both SUVmax and MV were obtained before and after cancer therapy. We evaluated the correlation between SUVmax and MV. We also evaluated the correlation of % change of both indices, calculated as (index obtained at post-therapy / index obtained at pre-therapy).

Results: The value of SUVmax weakly correlated positively with that of MV (r=0.52). In contrast, the correlation between %change of both index was fairly good (r=0.73).

Conclusions: The serial change of tumor metabolic volume correlates with that of SUVmax. The tumor metabolic volume obtained by 18F-FDG-PET/CT , %change in particular, is useful index for monitoring the therapeutic effects in cancer therapy.