Whole-Body [¹⁸F]FDG-PET/CT Imaging of Healthy Controls: Test/Retest Data for Systemic, Multi-Organ Analysis

Area of Science:

• Nuclear medicine
• Radiomics
• Oncology imaging

Background:

• Positron Emission Tomography (PET) with 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose (FDG) and Computed Tomography (CT) are crucial in cancer diagnostics, primarily for tumor detection.
• Current PET applications often overlook the systemic effects and the broader metabolic macroenvironment.
• A comprehensive understanding of metabolic changes beyond tumor sites is needed to improve patient care and treatment strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a normative FDG-PET database using healthy controls.
• To provide a reference for identifying voxel-level metabolic aberrations in cancer patients.
• To explore the potential of FDG-PET for assessing systemic treatment interactions and changes beyond primary tumor detection.

Main Methods:

• Acquisition of dynamic test-retest whole-body PET/CT imaging with [18F]FDG in 48 healthy controls.
• Reconstruction of static PET images (57-62 min post-injection) using CT-based corrections and iterative reconstruction with resolution recovery and time-of-flight.
• Calculation of Standardized Uptake Values (SUVs), Hounsfield Units (HU), and volumes for 135 organs using in-house segmentation software.

Main Results:

• A dataset of anonymized PET/CT images and CT-derived segmentations in NIfTI format was created from healthy controls.
• The methodology supports the development of a normative FDG-PET database.
• The data enables multi-organ analyses of metabolic activity using PET/CT imaging.

Conclusions:

• A normative FDG-PET database derived from healthy individuals is feasible and valuable.
• This database can serve as a reference for detecting subtle metabolic alterations in cancer patients.
• The approach holds promise for uncovering systemic treatment-related changes and enhancing patient management in oncology.