Quantitative FDG PET scans of primary breast cancers showed a rapid and significant decrease in tumor glucose metabolism after effective treatment was initiated, with the reduction in metabolism antedating any decrement in tumor size. No significant decrease in FDG uptake (SUV) after three cycles of treatment was observed in the nonresponding patients. FDG PET scanning has substantial promise as an early noninvasive metabolic marker of the efficacy of cancer treatment.

FDG PET with kinetic analysis appears to be a promising method for management of disease in patients with GCT after treatment.

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The implementation of spectral analysis techniques involves solving a highly underdetermined linear system equation and is prone to the effect of measurement noise. We propose to use a regularized non-negative least-square estimator to stabilize the implementation of the technique. We introduce a penalty term in our formulation of the objective function to discourage disparities in tracer kinetics between neighboring pixels and use an iterative method to impose positivity constraints. We show results from analysis of FDG thorax images of patients suspected to have cancers and summarize our findings.

No abstract