Objectives: F-DOPA PET is used in glioma follow-up after radiotherapy to discriminate treatment-related changes (TRC) from tumour progression (TP). We compared the performances of a combined PET and MRI analysis with F-DOPA current standard of Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation interpretation. Methods : We included 76 consecutive patients showing at least one gadolinium-enhancing lesion on T1-w MRI sequence (T1G). Two nuclear medicine physicians blindly analysed PET/MRI images. In addition to the conventional PET analysis, they looked for F-DOPA uptake(s) outside T1G-enhancing areas (T1G-/PET), in the white matter (WM/PET), for T1G-enhancing lesion(s) without sufficiently concordant F-DOPA uptake (T1G+/PET), and for F-DOPA uptake(s) away from haemorrhagic changes as shown with a Susceptibility Weighted Imaging sequence (SWI/PET). We measured lesions' F-DOPA uptake using healthy brain background (TBR) and striatum (T/S) as references, and lesions' perfusion with arterial spin labelling cerebral blood flow maps (rCBF). Scores were determined by logistic regression. Results: 53 and 23 patients were diagnosed with TP and TRC, respectively. The accuracies were 74% for T/S, 76% for TBR, and 84% for rCBF, with best cut-off values of 1.3, 3.7 and 1.25, respectively. For hybrid variables, best accuracies were obtained with conventional analysis (82%), T1G+/PET (82%) and SWI/PET (81%). T1G+/PET, SWI/PET and rCBF ≥ 1.25 were selected to construct a 3-point score. It outperformed conventional analysis and rCBF with an AUC of 0.94 and an accuracy of 87%. Conclusions : Our scoring approach combining F-DOPA PET and MRI provided better accuracy than conventional PET analyses for distinguishing TP from TRC in our patients after radiation therapy.
Response to Reviewers:Once again, we would like to thank the reviewers and the editorial team for their work.As requested, the manuscript was fully checked with the Grammarly software and modified accordingly.
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