Method for detecting voxelwise changes in fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography brain images via background adjustment in cancer clinical trials

Lei Qin; Armin Schwartzman; Keisha McCall; Nezamoddin N. Kachouie; Jeffrey T. Yap

doi:10.1117/1.JMI.4.2.024006

1 June 2017 Method for detecting voxelwise changes in fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography brain images via background adjustment in cancer clinical trials

Lei Qin, Armin Schwartzman, Keisha McCall, Nezamoddin N. Kachouie, Jeffrey T. Yap

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Medical Imaging, Vol. 4, Issue 2, 024006 (June 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.4.2.024006

Abstract

An important challenge to using fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) in clinical trials of brain tumor patients is to identify malignant regions whose metabolic activity shows significant changes between pretreatment and a posttreatment scans in the presence of high normal brain background metabolism. This paper describes a semiautomated processing and analysis pipeline that is able to detect such changes objectively with a given false detection rate. Image registration and voxelwise comparison of the pre- and posttreatment images were performed. A key step is adjustment of the observed difference by the estimated background change at each voxel, thereby overcoming the confounding effect of spatially heterogeneous metabolic activity in the brain. Components of the proposed method were validated via phantom experiments and computer simulations. It achieves a false response volume accuracy of 0.4% at a significance threshold of 3 standard deviations. It is shown that the proposed methodology can detect lesion response with 100% accuracy with a tumor-to-background-ratio as low as 1.5, and it is not affected by the background brain glucose metabolism change. We also applied the method to FDG-PET patient images from a clinical trial to assess treatment effects of lapatinib, which demonstrated significant changes in metabolism corresponding to tumor regions.

Citation Download Citation

Lei Qin, Armin Schwartzman, Keisha McCall, Nezamoddin N. Kachouie, and Jeffrey T. Yap "Method for detecting voxelwise changes in fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography brain images via background adjustment in cancer clinical trials," Journal of Medical Imaging 4(2), 024006 (1 June 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.4.2.024006

Received: 30 December 2016; Accepted: 10 May 2017; Published: 1 June 2017

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available