TY - JOUR T1 - Effect of tumor shape and size on drug delivery JF - Journal of Nuclear Medicine JO - J Nucl Med SP - 1220 LP - 1220 VL - 56 IS - supplement 3 AU - Madjid Soltani AU - Mostafa Sefidgar AU - Hossein Bazmara AU - Rathan Subramaniam AU - Arman Rahmim Y1 - 2015/05/01 UR - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/56/supplement_3/1220.abstract N2 - 1220 Objectives To investigate the effect of tumor shape and size on drug distribution and delivery based on PET images.Methods We have applied elaborate mathematical modeling to investigate various processes related to drug distribution, including convection and diffusion of drug in extracellular matrices, drug extravasation from microvessels or into lymphatic vessels and binding and unbinding to cells. An advanced numerical method is used to simultaneously solve fluid flow and drug transport equations to investigate the effect of tumor shape and size on drug delivery. The advanced mathematical model based on the convection-diffusion-reaction (CDR) equation is coupled to fluid flow equations to predict drug distribution in solid tumors. Different geometries of solid tumors were obtained from PET studies of pancreatic cancer. Tumor geometries were extracted from PET images using a series of numerical and geometrical techniques. After applying appropriate boundary and initial conditions on tumor and surrounding tissues, element-based finite volume method was used to solve governing equations of drug transport in tissues.Results The results show that drug delivery rates in tumors of same volume but different shapes are not equal and dependent on specific tumor shapes. The drug distribution is affected by diffusion and convection mechanisms and these mechanisms are dependent on tumor shape.Conclusions Tumor volume is commonly reported as an important metric for clinical outcome prediction. However, this study shows that tumor shape in addition to volume has significant effect on drug delivery.Research Support The research support is presented in one image file. ER -