title: Biomarkers from in vivo molecular imaging of breast cancer: pretreatment18F-FDG PET predicts patient prognosis, and pretreatment DWI-MR predicts response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Human cancers display intra-tumor phenotypic heterogeneity and recent research has focused on developing image processing methods extracting imaging descriptors to characterize this heterogeneity. This work assesses the role of pretreatment18F-FDG PET and DWI-MR with respect to the prognosis and prediction of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) outcomes when image features are used to characterize primitive lesions from breast cancer (BC).
  
  
  METHODS
  A retrospective protocol included 38 adult women with biopsy-proven BC. Patients underwent a pre-therapy18F-FDG PET/CT whole-body study and a pre-therapy breast multi-parametric MR study. Patients were then referred for NAC treatment and then for surgical resection, with an evaluation of the therapy response. Segmentation methods were developed in order to identify functional volumes both on18F-FDG PET images and ADC maps. Macroscopic and histogram features were extracted from the defined functional volumes.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our work demonstrates that macroscopic and histogram features from18F-FDG PET are able to biologically characterize primitive BC, and define the prognosis. In addition, histogram features from ADC maps are able to predict the response to NAC.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our work suggests that pre-treatment18F-FDG PET and pre-treatment DWI-MR provide useful complementary information for biological characterization and NAC response prediction in BC.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology, National Research Council (IBFM-CNR), Via Fratelli Cervi 93, Segrate, 20090, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gallivanone
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Centre for Experimental Imaging, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Marta Maria
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Panzeri
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine, Centre for Experimental Imaging, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Carla
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Canevari
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Centre for Experimental Imaging, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Losio
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine, Centre for Experimental Imaging, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gianolli
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Centre for Experimental Imaging, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.|Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Cobelli
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Bioimaging and Physiology, National Research Council (IBFM-CNR), Via Fratelli Cervi 93, Segrate, 20090, Milan, Italy. isabella.castiglioni@ibfm.cnr.it.
authors.forename: Isabella
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Castiglioni
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000378:metabolism; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism; D017024:Chemotherapy, Adjuvant; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D005260:Female; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D057054:Molecular Imaging; D020360:Neoadjuvant Therapy; D000072078:Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography; D011379:Prognosis; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D012189:Retrospective Studies
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18
keywords: 18F-FDG PET/CT; Breast cancer; DWI-MRI; Image features