Correlation between 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging and texture features in patients with lung cancer

Objectives To investigate the possibilities of an association between texture features and different pathological types and lesion size of Lung Cancer on 18F-FDG PET/CT.

Methods Medical records of 91 patients with lung cancer at PET Center, Huashan Hospital from 2007 to 2010 were retrospectively reviewed for the analysis of imaging texture features.86 were confirmed by pathological diagnosis of lung cancer and 5 were diagnosed with the clinical information. 86 patients included 43 of adenocarcinoma, 29 of squamous cell carcinoma, 5 of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma,5 of small cell carcinoma and 4 of adenosquamous carcinoma.The lesions were divided into 5 groups based on the maximum diameter of carcinoma lesions: (1)cm (10 cases); (2) ~ 2.0cm (25 cases); (3) ~ 3.0cm (19 cases); (4) ~ 5.0cm (28 cases); (5)> 5.0 cm (9 cases). Each ROI of lung carcinoma was outlined and 14 texture parameters (ASM, coarseness,contrast,complexity,entropy, GTSDM_contrast, skewness, busyness, standard deviation, kurtosis, strength, mean, correlation and median) were calculated.

Results There was no significant difference between three groups of adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, other pathology (P> 0.05).Overall, 7(ASM, roughness, coarseness, contrast, contrast, etc.) of 14 texture parameters were correlated with tumor size (P<0.01). Coarseness and mean were associated with tumor size Lesions ≤ 3.0 (P<0.01). Between groups of size ≤ 1.0cm, -2.0cm,-3.0cm,-5.0cm and >5.0cm, coarseness was significant (F = 6.943, P <0.01).

Conclusions The study suggested that There was no significant difference between FDG PET / CT fusion image texture parameters and the pathological types of lung cancer, some parameters were correlated with tumor size.

Research Support The Project of Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (No 08511501300