18F-fluoro-deoxy-glucose focal uptake in very small pulmonary nodules: fact or artifact? Case reports

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: F-fluoro-deoxy-glucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography integrated/combined with computed tomography (PET-CT) provides the best diagnostic results in the metabolic characterization of undetermined solid pulmonary nodules. The diagnostic performance of 18F-FDG is similar for nodules measuring at least 1 cm and for larger masses, but few data exist for nodules smaller than 1 cm. CASE PRESENTATION: We report five cases of oncologic patients showing focal lung 18F-FDG uptake on PET-CT in nodules smaller than 1 cm. We also discuss the most common causes of 18F-FDG false-positive and false-negative results in the pulmonary parenchyma. In patient 1, contrast-enhanced CT performed 10 days before PET-CT did not show any abnormality in the site of uptake; in patient 2, high-resolution CT performed 1 month after PET showed a bronchiole filled with dense material interpreted as a mucoid impaction; in patient 3, contrast-enhanced CT performed 15 days before PET-CT did not identify any nodules; in patients 4 and 5, contrast-enhanced CT revealed a nodule smaller than 1 cm which could not be characterized. The 18F-FDG uptake at follow-up confirmed the malignant nature of pulmonary nodules smaller than 1 cm which were undetectable, misinterpreted, not recognized or undetermined at contrast-enhanced CT. CONCLUSION: In all five oncologic patients, 18F-FDG was able to metabolically characterize as malignant those nodules smaller than 1 cm, underlining that: 18F-FDG uptake is not only a function of tumor size but it is strongly related to the tumor biology; functional alterations may precede morphologic abnormalities. In the oncologic population, especially in higher-risk patients, PET can be performed even when the nodules are smaller than 1 cm, because it might give an earlier characterization and, sometimes, could guide in the identification of alterations missed on CT

RECIST revised: implications for the radiologist. A review article on the modified RECIST guideline

The purpose of this review article is to familiarize radiologists with the recently revised Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours (RECIST), used in many anticancer drug trials to assess response and progression rate. The most important modifications are: a reduction in the maximum number of target lesions from ten to five, with a maximum of two per organ, with a longest diameter of at least 10 mm; in lymph nodes (LNs) the short axis rather than the long axis should be measured, with normal LN measuring <10 mm, non-target LN ≥10 mm but <15 mm and target LN ≥15 mm; osteolytic lesions with a soft tissue component and cystic tumours may serve as target lesions; an additional requirement for progressive disease (PD) of target lesions is not only a ≥20% increase in the sum of the longest diameter (SLD) from the nadir but also a ≥5 mm absolute increase in the SLD (the other response categories of target lesion are unchanged); PD of non-target lesions can only be applied if the increase in non-target lesions is representative of change in overall tumour burden; detailed imaging guidelines. Alternative response criteria in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and gastrointestinal stromal tumours are discussed

Morphological segmentation and partial volume analysis for volumetry of solid pulmonary lesions in thoracic CT scans

Volumetric growth assessment of pulmonary lesions is crucial to both lung cancer screening and oncological therapy monitoring. While several methods for small pulmonary nodules have previously been presented, the segmentation of larger tumors that appear frequently in oncological patients and are more likely to be complexly interconnected with lung morphology has not yet received much attention. We present a fast, automated segmentation method that is based on morphological processing and is suitable for both small and large lesions. In addition, the proposed approach addresses clinical challenges to volume assessment such as variations in imaging protocol or inspiration state by introducing a method of segmentation-based partial volume analysis (SPVA) that follows on the segmentation procedure. Accuracy and reproducibility studies were performed to evaluate the new algorithms. In vivo interobserver and interscan studies on low-dose data from eight clinical metastasis patients revealed that clinically significant volume change can be detected reliably and with negligible computation time by the presented methods. In addition, phantom studies were conducted. Based on the segmentation performed with the proposed method, the performance of the SPVA volumetry method was compared with the conventional technique on a phantom that was scanned with different dosages and reconstructed with varying parameters. Both systematic and absolute errors were shown to be reduced substantially by the SPVA method. The method was especially successful in accounting for slice thickness and reconstruction kernel variations, where the median error was more than halved in comparison to the conventional approach

Variability of Semiautomated Lung Nodule Volumetry on Ultralow-Dose CT: Comparison with Nodule Volumetry on Standard-Dose CT

The study investigates the effect of a substantial dose reduction on the variability of lung nodule volume measurements by assessing and comparing nodule volumes using a dedicated semiautomated segmentation software on ultralow-dose computed tomography (ULD-CT) and standard-dose computed tomography (SD-CT) data. In 20 patients, thin-slice chest CT datasets (1 mm slice thickness; 20% reconstruction overlap) were acquired at ultralow-dose (120 kV, 5 mAs) and at standard-dose (120 kV, 75 mAs), respectively, and analyzed using the segmentation software OncoTREAT (MeVis, Bremen, Germany; version 1.3). Interobserver variability of volume measurements of 202 solid pulmonary nodules (mean diameter 11 mm, range 3.2–44.5 mm) was calculated for SD-CT and ULD-CT. With respect to interobserver variability, the 95% confidence interval for the relative differences in nodule volume in the intrascan analysis was measured with −9.7% to 8.3% (mean difference −0.7%) for SD-CT and with −12.6% to 12.4% (mean difference −0.2%) for ULD-CT. In the interscan analysis, the 95% confidence intervals for the differences in nodule volume ranged with −25.1% to −23.4% and 26.2% to 28.9% (mean difference 1.4% to 2.1%) dependent on the combination of readers and scans. Intrascan interobserver variability of volume measurements was comparable for ULD-CT and SD-CT data. The calculated variability of volume measurements in the interscan analysis was similar to the data reported in the literature for CT data acquired with equal radiation dose. Thus, the evaluated segmentation software provides nodule volumetry that appears to be independent of the dose level with which the CT source dataset is acquired