Can pretreatment 18F-FDG PET tumor texture features predict the outcomes of osteosarcoma treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy?

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate whether tumor texture features derived from pretreatment with ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET) can predict histological response or event-free survival (EFS) in patients with localized osteosarcoma of the extremities treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC).

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 35 patients with American Joint Committee on Cancer stage II extremity osteosarcoma treated with NAC and surgery. Primary tumor traditional parameters and texture features were measured for all ¹⁸F-FDG PET images prior to treatment. After surgery, histological responses to NAC were evaluated on the postsurgical specimens. A receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was constructed to evaluate the optimal predictive performance among the various indices. EFS was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method and prognostic significance was assessed by Cox proportional hazards analysis.

Results: Pathologic examination revealed 16 (45.71%) good responders and 19 (54.29%) poor responders. Although both the texture features (least axis, dependence nonuniformity, run length nonuniformity, and size zone nonuniformity) and metabolic tumor volume (MTV) can predict tumor response of osteosarcoma to NAC, the traditional indicator MTV has the best performance according to ROC curve analysis (area under the curve = 0.918, p < 0.0001). In multivariate analysis, MTV (p < 0.0001), histological response (p = 0.0003), and texture feature of coarseness_NGTDM (neighboring gray tone difference matrix) (p = 0.005) were independently associated with EFS.

Conclusions: Intratumoral heterogeneity of baseline ¹⁸F-FDG uptake measured by PET texture analysis can predict tumor response and EFS of patients with extremity osteosarcoma treated by NAC, but the conventional parameter MTV provides better predictive power and is a strong independent prognostic factor.

Key points: • The baseline ¹⁸ F-FDG PET tumor texture features can predict tumor NAC response for patients with osteosarcoma. • Coarseness _NGTDM is a new and independent prognostic factor for osteosarcoma. • MTV provides the best predictive power and is a strong independent prognostic factor for patients with osteosarcoma.

Keywords: Diagnosis; Neoadjuvant therapy; Osteosarcoma; Positron emission tomography-computed tomography; Prognosis.