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Dryad

SUVfdg: a standard-uptake-value (SUV) body habitus normalizer specific to fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) in humans

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Apr 14, 2022 version files 17.51 KB

Abstract

In PET, several different Standard Uptake Value (SUV) metrics have been proposed utilizing different normalizers in an attempt to take into consideration the patient to patient differences in radionuclide uptake due to differences in body habitus (body weight, surface area, lean body mass). These normalizers are to some extent aribitrary in that they are selected from the list of proposed body habitus metrics, none of which necessarily describes well the distribution volume into which a given radionuclide labeled compound distributes with the body. 

In this work we propose a new body habitus normalizer, SUVfdg, that is specific to the tracer 18F-FDG and which like previously proposed SUV normalizers is a simple function of a patient's height and weight. Derivation of this metric assumed that absolute normal-liver FDG uptake rate is not itself a function of body habitus (i.e. is not correlated with height, weight, etc). The SUVfdg metric was tested in an independent cohort and shown to have little to no correlation with body habitus measures in normal liver, spleen and blood. When applied to normal brain uptake, it was shown to vary as a function of patient age.