Nuclear Medicine Communications

OBJECTIVE: Retrospective review of the additional clinical value provided by single photon emission computed tomography-computed tomography (SPECT/CT) in children and adolescents with back pain. METHODS: A total of 207 consecutive paediatric patients (94 males, 113 females, age range 5-17 years, median age 14 years) were reviewed after referral to the spinal surgery clinic of a paediatric teaching hospital between November 2009 and February 2021. All patients had either only whole spine X-rays or whole spine x-rays and MRI, along with bone scan with planar whole-body images and SPECT/CT (with spot views of painful area)...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the diagnostic value of [68Ga] Ga-Pentixafor in malignant melanoma patients. METHODS: In this prospective study, patients with histology-proven melanoma were included and underwent [18F]fluoro-D-glucose ([18F]FDG) and [68Ga] Ga-Pentixafor PET/computed tomography (CT) within a week. Suspicious lesions were interpreted as benign vs. malignant, and the corresponding semi-quantitative PET/CT parameters were recorded and compared. RESULTS: Twelve consecutive melanoma patients (mean age: 60 ± 6) were included...

OBJECTIVES: There is a lack of sufficient evidence regarding the use of extended shelf-life (ExSL) Yttrium-90 (90Y) glass radiomicrospheres in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients. We aimed to investigate the efficacy of ExSL 90Y glass radiomicrospheres with a personalized treatment approach by analyzing 18F-FDG PET/CT quantitative parameters [metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG)] separately before and after the treatment. METHODS: A total of 93 radioembolization sessions involving 77 patients were included...

METHODS: 18F-FDG brain PET and clinical score were collected in 85 patients with dementia and 125 healthy controls (HC). Patients were assigned to various form of dementia on the basis of clinical evaluation, follow-up and voxels comparison with HC using a two-sample Student's t-test, to determine the regions of brain involved. Radiomic analysis was performed on the whole brain after normalization to an optimized template. After feature selection using the minimum redundancy maximum relevance method and Pearson's correlation coefficients, a Neural Network model was tested to find the accuracy to classify HC and demented patients...

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to assess the prognostic value of clinical factors and metabolic parameters measured using fluorodeoxyglucose PET (FDG-PET/CT) in predicting disease recurrence, as well as distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), local recurrence-free survival (LRFS), and overall survival (OS) in patients with uterine cervical cancer who received definitive chemoradiotherapy. METHODS: The clinical data and FDG-PET parameters, including standardized uptake value (SUV), metabolic tumor volume (MTV), and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) of 194 patients with biopsy-confirmed squamous cell carcinoma of cervical cancer were retrospectively analyzed...

PURPOSE: In recent years, the use of fluorodeoxyglucose PET-computed tomography (PET-CT) has become widespread to evaluate the diagnosis, metabolism, stage and distant metastases of thymoma. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the connection of malignancy potential, survival and maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) measured by PET-CT before surgery according to the histological classification of the WHO in patients operated for thymoma. In addition, the predictive value of the Glasgow prognostic score (GPS) generated by C-reactive protein (CRP) and albumin values on recurrence and survival was investigated and its potential as a prognostic biomarker was evaluated...

PURPOSE: A small number of patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma (MM) by bone marrow aspiration reported as being disease-free on 18F-FDG PET/CT. We aim to evaluate the diagnostic value of radiomics approach in patients with MM who were negative by visual analysis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-three patients judged negative by visual analysis were assigned to the MM group. Contemporaneous 31 disease-free patients served as the control group. 70% of the whole data set was used as training set (23 from MM group and 22 from control group) and 30% as testing set (10 from MM group and 9 from control group)...

OBJECTIVE: This study was carried out to confirm whether patients with intermediate-risk differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) could benefit from initial 131I ablation and to identify the factors that impacted the benefit. METHODS: We retrospectively assessed a cohort of 548 patients with intermediate-risk DTC who were classified into structural incomplete response (SIR), biochemical incomplete response (BIR), indeterminate response (IDR), and excellent response (ER) groups according to the ATA guidelines (version 2015)...

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore 64-Copper-Chloride (64CuCl2) PET-CT in various malignancies and demonstrate a head-to-head comparison of uptake on 64CuCl2 PET/computed tomography (CT) and 18fluorodeoxyglucose (18FDG)-PET/CT scans for different malignancies, with an emphasis on 18FDG nonavid malignancies. METHODS: Fifty-three patients diagnosed with various biopsy-proven malignancies (except prostate cancer) were recruited in this prospective study. All the patients underwent both 64CuCl2 PET/CT and 18FDG-PET/CT...

OBJECTIVES: A deep learning (DL) model using image data from pretreatment [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose ([18F] FDG)-PET or computed tomography (CT) augmented with a novel imaging augmentation approach was developed for the early prediction of distant metastases in patients with locally advanced uterine cervical cancer. METHODS: This study used baseline [18F]FDG-PET/CT images of newly diagnosed uterine cervical cancer patients. Data from 186 to 25 patients were analyzed for training and validation cohort, respectively...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the diagnostic utility of 68Ga-Pentixafor PET/CT for in vivo imaging of CXCR4 receptors in soft tissue/bone sarcoma. METHODS: Ten (7M: 3F; mean age = 24.7 ± 14.2 years) consecutive patients with clinical and radiological evidence of bone/soft tissue sarcoma were recruited prospectively whole body 68Ga-Pentixafor PET/CT imaging was performed at 60-min after tracer administration. After performing standard CT, PET acquisition from head to toe was done (3 min/bed position) in a caudocranial direction...

OBJECTIVES: To determine if three new simplified equations for measurement of free mebrofenin clearance give similar results to the equations defined by Ekman et. al., and to evaluate the properties of all four methods. Regional mebrofenin clearance has been used to predict future remnant liver function and liver failure after regional liver therapy, such as partial hepatic resection. METHODS: The means, standard deviations, and correlations of the free mebrofenin clearance measured by the Ekman method and the three simplified methods were compared in a consecutive series of 26 studies in 20 patients...

OBJECTIVE: To explore the value of 18F-FDG PET/CT tumor metabolic heterogeneity index (HI) and establish and validate a nomogram model for distinguishing head and neck cancer of unknown primary (HNCUP) from lymphoma with head and neck metastatic poorly differentiated cancer. METHODS: This retrospective analysis was conducted on 1242 patients with cervical metastatic poorly differentiated cancer. 108 patients, who were clinically and pathologically confirmed as HNCUP or lymphoma, were finally enrolled...

PURPOSE: To identify long-term predictors of distant metastases (DM) and the overall survival (OS) of follicular thyroid cancer (FTC) patients who underwent radioactive iodine (RAI) therapy. And to expand the knowledge about the clinical course and experience of RAI treatment for FTC. MATERIALS: A total of 117 FTC patients who underwent RAI therapy at our institution from 2005 to 2020 were retrospectively studied. Patient characteristics, serum stimulating thyroglobulin (sTg) and thyroglobulin antibody levels, treatment process and follow-up data were collected until 26 April 2022...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to directly evaluate glucose, amino-acid and membrane metabolism in tumor cells for diagnosis and prognostication of recurrent gliomas. METHODS: Fifty-five patients (median age = 36 years; 33 men) with histologically proven gliomas and suspected recurrence were prospectively recruited and underwent 18F-FDG (Fluorodeoxyglucose), 18F-FDOPA (fluorodopa) and 18F-Fluorocholine-PET/CT. Images were evaluated by two physicians visually and quantitatively [lesion-SUVmax, tumor (T) to gray-matter (G) and metabolically-active tumor volumes (MTV)]...

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OBJECTIVE: Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) is an important biomarker for targeted gastric cancer (GC) immunotherapy. However, heterogeneous HER2 overexpression in GC, loss of HER2 expression during therapy, and inability to non-invasively identify HER2 overexpressing tumors impede effective targeting therapies. Improved HER2-specific functional imaging can address these challenges. Trastuzumab is a HER2-directed mAb to treat HER2 overexpressing cancers. The 64 Cu-DOTA-trastuzumab radiotracer is used to detect HER2+ metastatic breast cancer...

OBJECTIVES: This prospective, multicenter, open-label, randomized, crossover trial study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of 18F-PSMA-1007 (PSMA) vs. 18F-Choline PET/CT (FCH) in prostate cancer (PCa) patients (pts) with biochemical recurrence (BCR). METHODS: One hundred eighty-six pts, who have undergone primary definitive treatment for PCa with BCR, were recruited to this prospective study. All pts underwent one PSMA and one FCH PET/CT examination in randomized order within a time frame of 8 days and were followed up for at least 6 months (182 ± 10 days)...

BACKGROUND: This study evaluated total-body glucose metabolism in a preclinical lab animal, the rabbit, by employing a dynamic glucose metabolic image obtained with total-body fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose ( 18 F-FDG) PET/computed tomography (PET/CT). METHODS: The dynamic total-body PET/CT system was used to obtain glucose metabolic imaging from 10 sedated body-matched rabbits. The standard uptake value (SUV) of 18 F-FDG was used to evaluate glucose metabolism...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Radionuclide ventriculography or Multi Gated Acquisition (MUGA) employing [99mTc]Technetium red blood cell (RBC) labeling is considered the gold standard for cardiotoxicity assessments in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. This in-vivo RBC labeling technique involves the reduction of [99mTc]Technetium by the stannous chloride present in freeze-dried reagent kits, with the pyrophosphate kit (PYP) being the most employed for this purpose. The literature, however, describes diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) as an alternative to PYP, although a lack of comparative data from MUGA images between both reagents is noted...