Quantitative analysis of liver standardized uptake value repeatability in SPECT/CT implications for clinical practice

Area of Science:

• Nuclear Medicine
• Hepatology
• Radiomics

Background:

• Liver receptor scintigraphy is used to assess liver function.
• Standardized uptake value normalized by liver volume (SUVL) is a quantitative measure derived from SPECT/CT.
• Assessing the repeatability of SUVL is crucial for its clinical application in monitoring liver conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the day-to-day repeatability of SUVL measurements in liver receptor SPECT/CT studies.
• To determine if SUVL is a reliable biomarker for longitudinal assessment of liver fibrosis.
• To investigate SUVL repeatability in patients with normal Indocyanine Green retention test (ICG-R15) values.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of 38 patients undergoing serial liver receptor SPECT/CT scans.
• Calculation of SUVLmax, SUVLpeak, and SUVLmean for each scan.
• Assessment of repeatability using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Bland-Altman analysis.

Main Results:

• All SUVL metrics (SUVLmax, SUVLpeak, SUVLmean) demonstrated excellent repeatability with ICC(1,1) values > 0.8.
• Bland-Altman analysis revealed no significant additive or proportional errors between scans.
• These findings indicate high consistency of SUVL measurements over time.

Conclusions:

• SUVL measurements in liver receptor SPECT/CT are highly repeatable in patients with normal ICG-R15 values.
• SUVL is a reliable quantitative biomarker for monitoring liver fibrosis progression over time.
• This supports the potential use of SUVL in the follow-up management of liver disease.