%0 Journal Article
%T Obtaining quantitative global tumoral state indicators based on whole-body PET/CT scans: A breast cancer case study
%A Frederic Sampedro
%A Anna Domenech
%A Sergio Escalera
%J Nuclear Medicine Communications
%D 2014
%V 35
%N 4
%F Frederic Sampedro2014
%O HuPBA;MILAB
%O exported from refbase (http://refbase.cvc.uab.es/show.php?record=2444), last updated on Tue, 28 Jun 2016 09:33:52 +0200
%X Objectives: In this work we address the need for the computation of quantitative global tumoral state indicators from oncological whole-body PET/computed tomography scans. The combination of such indicators with other oncological information such as tumor markers or biopsy results would prove useful in oncological decision-making scenarios.Materials and methods: From an ordering of 100 breast cancer patients on the basis of oncological state through visual analysis by a consensus of nuclear medicine specialists, a set of numerical indicators computed from image analysis of the PET/computed tomography scan is presented, which attempts to summarize a patient’s oncological state in a quantitative manner taking into consideration the total tumor volume, aggressiveness, and spread.Results: Results obtained by comparative analysis of the proposed indicators with respect to the experts’ evaluation show up to 87% Pearson’s correlation coefficient when providing expert-guided PET metabolic tumor volume segmentation and 64% correlation when using completely automatic image analysis techniques.Conclusion: Global quantitative tumor information obtained by whole-body PET/CT image analysis can prove useful in clinical nuclear medicine settings and oncological decision-making scenarios. The completely automatic computation of such indicators would improve its impact as time efficiency and specialist independence would be achieved.
%U http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24374574
%P 362-371