Quantitative imaging: Erring patterns in manual delineation of PET-imaged lung lesions

Worldwide, lung cancer is the most common malignant tumor, accounting for 1.69 million new cases in 2015 [1], and remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality with a predicted 5-year survival rate of 8 –13% [2]. Histopathologically, lung cancer is broadly categorized as small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with the latter constituting approximately 85% of the cases [3]. 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) with demonstrated high sensitivit y and specificity for tumor detection has become the standard of care in baseline staging and restaging for both SCLC and NSCLC, and it has recently also been making inroads into a number of other key essential components of the clinical management of patients with lung cancer ranging from therapy p lanning to response assessment and surveillance — and even to prognosis and prediction of therapeutic outcomes where the emerging concept of using radiological imaging traits as surrogates for tumoral phenotypic spatial heterogeneity is advocated [4–7].
Source: Radiotherapy and Oncology - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Original Article Source Type: research