title: Deformation effect on SUVmax changes in thoracic tumors using 4-D PET/CT scan.
abstract: Respiratory motion blurs the standardized uptake value (SUV) and leads to a further signal reduction and changes in the SUV maxima. 4D PET can provide accurate tumor localization as a function of the respiratory phase in PET/CT imaging. We investigated thoracic tumor motion by respiratory 4D CT and assessed its deformation effect on the SUV changes in 4D PET imaging using clinical patient data. Twelve radiation oncology patients with thoracic cancer, including five lung cancer patients and seven esophageal cancer patients, were recruited to the present study. The 4D CT and PET image sets were acquired and reconstructed for 10 respiratory phases across the whole respiratory cycle. The optical flow method was applied to the 4D CT data to calculate the maximum displacements of the tumor motion in respiration. Our results show that increased tumor motion has a significant degree of association with the SUVmax loss for lung cancer. The results also show that the SUVmax loss has a higher correlation with tumors located at lower lobe of lung or at lower regions of esophagus.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Imaging and Radiological Science, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan. tzungchi.huang@mail.cmu.edu.tw
authors.forename: Tzung-Chi
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Yao-Ching
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016477:Artifacts; D005260:Female; D056973:Four-Dimensional Computed Tomography; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009068:Movement; D064847:Multimodal Imaging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D055425:Respiratory-Gated Imaging Techniques; D013899:Thoracic Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed