Correlation between Tissue Cellularity and Metabolism Represented by Diffusion-Weighted Imaging (DWI) and 18F-FDG PET/MRI in Head and Neck Cancer (HNC)

Omar Freihat; Tóth Zoltán; Tamas Pinter; András Kedves; Dávid Sipos; Imre Repa; Árpád Kovács; Cselik Zsolt

doi:10.3390/cancers14030847

Correlation between Tissue Cellularity and Metabolism Represented by Diffusion-Weighted Imaging (DWI) and 18F-FDG PET/MRI in Head and Neck Cancer (HNC)

Cancers (Basel). 2022 Feb 8;14(3):847. doi: 10.3390/cancers14030847.

Authors

Omar Freihat¹, Tóth Zoltán^{2

3}, Tamas Pinter⁴, András Kedves^{2

4

5}, Dávid Sipos^{1

2

4}, Imre Repa^{2

4}, Árpád Kovács^{1

2

6}, Cselik Zsolt^{2

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Imaging, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pécs, 7621 Pécs, Hungary.
² Doctoral School of Health Sciences, University of Pécs, 7621 Pécs, Hungary.
³ MEDICOPUS Healthcare Provider and Public Nonprofit Ltd., Somogy County Moritz Kaposi Teaching Hospital, 7400 Kaposvár, Hungary.
⁴ Dr. József Baka Diagnostic, Radiation Oncology, Research and Teaching Center, "Moritz Kaposi" Teaching Hospital, 7400 Kaposvár, Hungary.
⁵ Institute of Information Technology and Electrical Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Pécs, 7621 Pécs, Hungary.
⁶ Department of Oncoradiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Debrecen, 4032 Debrecen, Hungary.
⁷ Csolnoky Ferenc County Hospital, 8200 Veszprém, Hungary.

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to assess the association of 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose positron-emission-tomography (18F-FDG/PET) and DWI imaging parameters from a primary tumor and their correlations with clinicopathological factors.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed primary tumors in 71 patients with proven HNC. Primary tumor radiological parameters: DWI and FDG, as well as pathological characteristics were analyzed. Spearman correlation coefficient was used to assess the correlation between DWI and FDG parameters, ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis, independent sample t-test, Mann-Whitney test, and multiple regression were performed on the clinicopathological features that may affect the 18F- FDG and apparent-diffusion coefficient (ADC) of the tumor.

Results: No significant correlations were observed between DWI and any of the 18F-FDG parameters (p > 0.05). SUVmax correlated with N-stages (p = 0.023), TLG and MTV correlated with T-stages (p = 0.006 and p = 0.001), and ADC correlated with tumor grades (p = 0.05). SUVmax was able to differentiate between N+ and N- groups (p = 0.004).

Conclusions: Our results revealed a non-significant correlation between the FDG-PET and ADC-MR parameters. FDG-PET-based glucose metabolic and DWI-MR-derived cellularity data may represent different biological aspects of HNC.

Keywords: PET/MRI; apparent diffusion coefficient; diffusion-weighted imaging; glucose metabolism; head and neck squamous cell carcinoma; primary tumor.