Page 77 - Quantitative Imaging of Small Tumours with Positron Emission Tomography

Chapter 3 Conclusion Parametric PVC using iterative deconvolution had a significant impact on tumour kinetic macro- and microparameter estimations from dynamic PET- CT. The relative effects of PVC on kinetic parameter estimations and simplified metrics were poorly correlated. This resulted in a non-significant trend in higher correlation between VT and SUV in single reads and affected its technical validation as a biomarker of treatment response to a small extent. Therefore, the impact of image resolution on technical validation of simplified metrics for clinical use seems to be small. When optimized according to tracer kinetics, HYPR denoising may adequately reduce PVC-induced image noise for low count and low contrast timeframes. However, it has only limited effect on kinetic parameter estimations and thus may be obviated for region-based non-linear regression analysis. Future oncologic dynamic PET-CT studies should preferably incorporate partial-volume correction to acquire accurate quantitative reads. 76