Macrovasculature and positron emission tomography (PET) standardized uptake value in patients with lung cancer

PURPOSE: To investigate the relationship between macro-vasculature features and the standardized uptake value (SUV) of positron emission tomography (PET), which is a surrogate for the metabolic activity of a lung tumor. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed a cohort of 90 lung cancer patients who had both chest CT and PET-CT examinations before receiving cancer treatment. The SUVs in the medical reports were used. We quantified three macro-vasculature features depicted on CT images (i.e., vessel number, vessel volume, and vessel tortuosity) and several tumor features (i.e., volume, maximum diameter, mean diameter, surface area, and density). Tumor size (e.g., volume) was used as a covariate to adjust for possible confounding factors. Backward stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to develop a model for predicting PET SUV from the relevant image features. The Bonferroni correction was used for multiple comparisons. RESULTS: PET SUV was positively correlated with vessel volume (R=0.44, p0.05). After adjusting for tumor size, PET SUV was significantly correlated with vessel tortuosity (R=0.299, p=0.004) and vessel number (R=0.224, p=0.035), but only marginally correlated with vessel volume (R=0.187, p=0.079). The multiple regression model showed a performance with an R-Squared of 0.391 and an adjusted R-Squared of 0.355 (p