Quantitation of dynamic total-body PET imaging: recent developments and future perspectives

Area of Science:

• Nuclear Medicine
• Medical Imaging
• Quantitative Analysis

Background:

• Positron emission tomography (PET) is crucial for disease diagnosis, treatment planning, and research.
• Standardized uptake value (SUV) is a common static measure, but dynamic PET offers richer metabolic data.
• Dynamic PET requires arterial input function and kinetic modeling for quantitative analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To outline published dynamic total-body PET datasets.
• To present challenges and opportunities in quantifying total-body PET studies.
• To provide an overview of quantitative methodologies for diverse tissues.

Main Methods:

• Review of dynamic total-body PET datasets and quantitative techniques.
• Overview of input function calculation methods (blood sampling, image-based, population, model-based).
• Discussion of kinetic analysis approaches: parametric (compartmental, graphical, spectral) and non-parametric (B-spline, piece-wise).

Main Results:

• New-generation total-body PET scanners enable simultaneous multi-organ kinetics derivation.
• Challenges include large data sizes and organ-specific physiology.
• Direct application of classical methods may yield inaccurate results without validation.

Conclusions:

• Dynamic total-body PET imaging presents significant opportunities for quantitative analysis.
• Methodologies for input function and kinetic modeling are essential.
• Further development and validation are needed for diverse tissue environments.