TY - JOUR
T1 - Functional tumor diameter measurement with molecular breast imaging
T2 - development and clinical application
AU - Lopez, Benjamin P.
AU - Rauch, Gaiane M.
AU - Adrada, Beatriz
AU - Kappadath, S. Cheenu
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge the support of the High Performance Computing for research facility at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for providing computational resources that have contributed to the research results reported in this paper. This work was supported in part by a research grant from GE Healthcare and from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Support Grant CA016672 from the National Institutes of Health. Additional thanks to Drs. Medine Boge, Rania Mohamed, and Miral Patel for their assistance with acquiring the clinical data and to Dr Fada Guan for his assistance with Monte Carlo simulations.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2022/9
Y1 - 2022/9
N2 - Purpose: Molecular breast imaging (MBI) is used clinically to visualize the uptake of 99mTc-sestamibi in breast cancers. Here, we use Monte Carlo simulations to develop a methodology to estimate tumor diameter in focal lesions and explore a semi-automatic implementation for clinical data. Methods: A validated Monte Carlo simulation of the GE Discovery NM 750b was used to simulate >75,000 unique spherical/ellipsoidal tumor, normal breast, and image acquisition conditions. Subsets of this data were used to 1) characterize the dependence of the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of a tumor profile on tumor, normal breast, and acquisition conditions, 2) develop a methodology to estimate tumor diameters, and 3) quantify the diameter accuracy in a broad range of clinical conditions. Finally, the methodology was implemented in patient images and compared to diameter estimates from physician contours on MBI, mammography, and ultrasound imaging. Results: Tumor profile FWHM was determined be linearly dependent on tumor diameter but independent of other factors such as tumor shape, uptake, and distance from the detector. A linear regression was used to calculate tumor diameter from the FWHM estimated from a background-corrected profile across a tumor extracted from a median-filtered single-detector MBI image, i.e., diameter = 1.2 mm + 1.2 × FWHM, for FWHM ≥ 13 mm. Across a variety of simulated clinical conditions, the mean error of the methodology was 0.2 mm (accuracy), with >50% of cases estimated within 1-pixel width of the truth (precision). In patient images, the semi-automatic methodology provided the longest diameter in 94% (60/64) of cases. The estimated true diameters, for oval lesions with homogeneous uptake, differed by ± 5 mm from physician measurements. Conclusion: This work demonstrates the feasibility of accurately quantifying tumor diameter in clinical MBI, and to our knowledge, is the first to explore its implementation and application in patient data.
AB - Purpose: Molecular breast imaging (MBI) is used clinically to visualize the uptake of 99mTc-sestamibi in breast cancers. Here, we use Monte Carlo simulations to develop a methodology to estimate tumor diameter in focal lesions and explore a semi-automatic implementation for clinical data. Methods: A validated Monte Carlo simulation of the GE Discovery NM 750b was used to simulate >75,000 unique spherical/ellipsoidal tumor, normal breast, and image acquisition conditions. Subsets of this data were used to 1) characterize the dependence of the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of a tumor profile on tumor, normal breast, and acquisition conditions, 2) develop a methodology to estimate tumor diameters, and 3) quantify the diameter accuracy in a broad range of clinical conditions. Finally, the methodology was implemented in patient images and compared to diameter estimates from physician contours on MBI, mammography, and ultrasound imaging. Results: Tumor profile FWHM was determined be linearly dependent on tumor diameter but independent of other factors such as tumor shape, uptake, and distance from the detector. A linear regression was used to calculate tumor diameter from the FWHM estimated from a background-corrected profile across a tumor extracted from a median-filtered single-detector MBI image, i.e., diameter = 1.2 mm + 1.2 × FWHM, for FWHM ≥ 13 mm. Across a variety of simulated clinical conditions, the mean error of the methodology was 0.2 mm (accuracy), with >50% of cases estimated within 1-pixel width of the truth (precision). In patient images, the semi-automatic methodology provided the longest diameter in 94% (60/64) of cases. The estimated true diameters, for oval lesions with homogeneous uptake, differed by ± 5 mm from physician measurements. Conclusion: This work demonstrates the feasibility of accurately quantifying tumor diameter in clinical MBI, and to our knowledge, is the first to explore its implementation and application in patient data.
KW - functional tumor diameter
KW - molecular breast imaging
KW - Monte Carlo simulation
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U2 - 10.1088/2057-1976/ac85f0
DO - 10.1088/2057-1976/ac85f0
M3 - Article
C2 - 35917778
AN - SCOPUS:85136281866
VL - 8
JO - Biomedical Physics and Engineering Express
JF - Biomedical Physics and Engineering Express
SN - 2057-1976
IS - 5
M1 - 055026
ER -