Characterization of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose metabolic spatial distribution improves the differential diagnosis of indeterminate pulmonary nodules and masses with high fluorodeoxyglucose uptake
2021
Background The aim of this study was to investigate the value of visual assessment of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) metabolic spatial distribution (V-FMSD) in the diagnosis of indeterminate pulmonary nodules and masses with high 18F-FDG uptake. Methods A total of 301 patients with indeterminate pulmonary nodules or masses who underwent 18F-FDG positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) imaging were retrospectively studied. The characteristics of 18F-FDG metabolic spatial distribution (FMSD) in the proximal and distal regions of the lesions were visually analyzed using a 5-point scoring system. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) were compared between V-FMSD and conventional PET/CT methods for the diagnosis of hypermetabolic indeterminate pulmonary nodules and masses. Results The V-FMSD results showed that 180 (92.8%) malignant lesions had a score of ≥3 and 78 (72.9%) benign lesions had a score of ≤2. This indicated that the FMSD in the proximal region of malignant lesions was significantly higher than that of the distal region, and the FMSD in the proximal region of benign lesions was significantly lower than that of the distal region. V-FMSD had a specificity of 72.9%, which was markedly higher than those of the maximum standard uptake value (SUVmax; 0%, P<0.001) and the retention index (RI; 26.2%, P<0.001). The AUC of V-FMSD was 0.886, which was significantly larger than those of the SUVmax (0.626, P<0.001), RI (0.670, P<0.001), and PET/CT (0.788, P<0.05). Conclusions Our study found that pulmonary benign and malignant lesions have distinct FMSD characteristics. V-FMSD can therefore be used as a novel auxiliary marker to improve the diagnostic accuracy of hypermetabolic indeterminate pulmonary nodules and masses.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
33
References
0
Citations
NaN
KQI