A novel method for generating a fused ventilation-perfusion map using CT-derived ventilation and FDG-PET for lung...

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Radiotherapy
• Pulmonary Function

Background:

• Pulmonary ventilation-perfusion (VP) function is vital for lung cancer radiotherapy planning and prognosis.
• Current imaging methods lack the speed and cost-effectiveness to accurately capture VP function.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an integrated lung functional imaging technique combining CT and PET.
• To create a ventilation-perfusion (VP) image for enhanced lung dose evaluation in radiotherapy.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of 20 lung cancer patients' CT and FDG-PET/CT images.
• Used Elastic Distortion for deformable image registration and calculated VP matrices.
• Generated ventilation (V), perfusion (P), and VP functional images.

Main Results:

• The fused VP map showed significant concordance with P-VP images, especially in low-function lung regions (correlation coefficient 0.857).
• Dice Similarity Coefficients indicated good agreement between V-VP and P-VP images.
• Similarity was lower in high-function lung regions.

Conclusions:

• A novel method for generating a fused VP map by integrating CT-derived ventilation and FDG-PET data was developed.
• The VP map offers a balanced representation of ventilation and perfusion signals.
• This technique shows feasibility for improving lung dose evaluation in radiotherapy planning.