Monitoring early response to chemoradiotherapy with 18 F-FMISO dynamic PET in head and neck cancer

ConclusionPharmacokinetic modeling of FMISO dynamic PET reveals a more detailed characterization of the tumor microenvironment and assessment of response to chemoradiotherapy in HNC patients than a single static image does. In a clinical trial where absence of hypoxia in primary tumor and lymph nodes would lead to de-escalation of therapy, the observed disagreement between visual analysis and pharmacokinetic modeling results would have affected patient management in<20% cases. While simple static PET imaging is easily implemented for clinical trials, the clinical applicability of pharmacokinetic modeling remains to be investigated.
Source: European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging - Category: Nuclear Medicine Source Type: research