Correlations between [⁶⁸Ga]Ga-DOTA-TOC Uptake and Absorbed Dose from [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE

The aim of this paper was to investigate correlations between pre- therapeutic [⁶⁸Ga]Ga-DOTA-TOC uptake and absorbed dose to tumours from therapy with [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE.

This retrospective study included 301 tumours from 54 GEP-NET patients. The tumours were segmented on pre-therapeutic [⁶⁸Ga]Ga-DOTA-TOC PET/CT, and post-therapy [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE SPECT/CT images, using a fixed 40% threshold. The SPECT/CT images were used for absorbed dose calculations by assuming a linear build-up from time zero to day one, and mono-exponential wash-out after that. Both SUV_mean and SUV_max were measured from the PET images. A linear absorbed-dose prediction model was formed with SUV_mean as the independent variable, and the accuracy was tested with a split 70-30 training-test set.

Mean SUV_mean and SUV_max from [⁶⁸Ga]Ga-DOTA-TOC PET was 24.0 (3.6-84.4) and 41.0 (6.7-146.5), and the mean absorbed dose from [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE was 26.9 Gy (2.4-101.9). A linear relationship between SUV_mean and [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE activity concentration at 24 h post injection was found (R² = 0.44, p < 0.05). In the prediction model, a root mean squared error and a mean absolute error of 1.77 and 1.33 Gy/GBq, respectively, were found for the test set.

There was a high inter- and intra-patient variability in tumour measurements, both for [⁶⁸Ga]Ga-DOTA-TOC SUVs and absorbed doses from [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE. Depending on the required accuracy, [⁶⁸Ga]Ga-DOTA-TOC PET imaging may estimate the [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE uptake. However, there could be a high variance between predicted and actual absorbed doses.