Imaging bone and soft tissue tumors with the proliferation marker [18F]fluorodeoxythymidine

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiology

Background:

• Bone and soft tissue tumors require accurate detection and grading for effective treatment.
• Positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging modality used to assess tumor characteristics.
• Assessing tumor proliferation is crucial for determining malignancy and grade.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the ability of 3 -deoxy-3 [18F]fluorothymidine (FLT) PET to detect bone and soft tissue tumors.
• To assess the utility of FLT PET in tumor grading.
• To differentiate between malignant and benign bone and soft tissue lesions using FLT PET.

Main Methods:

• A prospective bicenter trial involving 22 patients with suspected bone or soft tissue lesions.
• FLT PET imaging was performed 45-60 minutes after intravenous injection of FLT.
• Tumor tracer uptake was quantified using standardized uptake values (SUV) and compared with histopathology and grading.

Main Results:

• FLT PET successfully detected all 17 malignant bone or soft tissue tumors.
• FLT uptake significantly correlated with tumor grade (r = 0.71), unlike FDG uptake (r = 0.01).
• A FLT-SUV cutoff of 2.0 effectively distinguished between low- and high-grade tumors.

Conclusions:

• FLT PET is a valuable tool for imaging malignant bone and soft tissue tumors.
• FLT PET demonstrates significant correlation with tumor grade, outperforming FDG PET.
• FLT PET shows promise as a superior noninvasive PET tracer for sarcoma grading.