Repeatability of 18F-FDG uptake in metastatic bone lesions of breast cancer patients and implications for accrual to clinical trials

Abstract

BACKGROUND Standard measures of response such as Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors are ineffective for bone lesions, often making breast cancer patients with bone-dominant metastases ineligible for clinical trials with potentially helpful therapies. In this study we prospectively evaluated the test-retest uptake variability of 2-deoxy-2-[¹⁸F]fluoro-D-glucose (¹⁸F-FDG) in a cohort of breast cancer patients with bone-dominant metastases to determine response criteria. The thresholds for 95% specificity of change versus no-change were then applied to a second cohort of breast cancer patients with bone-dominant metastases. In this study, nine patients with 38 bone lesions were imaged with ¹⁸F-FDG in the same calibrated scanner twice within 14 days. Tumor uptake was quantified as the maximum tumor voxel normalized by dose and body weight (SUVmax) and the mean of a 1-cc maximal uptake volume normalized by dose and lean-body-mass (SULpeak). The asymmetric repeatability coefficients with confidence intervals of SUVmax and SULpeak were used to determine limits of ¹⁸F-FDG uptake variability. A second cohort of 28 breast cancer patients with bone-dominant metastases that had 146 metastatic bone lesions was imaged with ¹⁸F-FDG before and after standard-of-care therapy for response assessment. RESULTS The mean relative difference of SUVmax in 38 bone tumors of the first cohort was 4.3%. The upper and lower asymmetric limits of the repeatability coefficient were 19.4% and -16.3%, respectively. The ¹⁸F-FDG repeatability coefficient confidence intervals resulted in the following patient stratification for the second patient cohort: 11-progressive disease, 5-stable disease, 7-partial response, and 1-complete response with three inevaluable patients. The asymmetric repeatability coefficients response criteria changed the status of 3 patients compared to standard the standard Positron Emission Tomography Response Criteria in Solid Tumors of ±30% SULpeak. CONCLUSIONS In evaluating bone tumor response for breast cancer patients with bone-dominant metastases using ¹⁸F-FDG uptake, the repeatability coefficients from test-retest studies show that reductions of more than 17% and increases of more than 20% are unlikely to be due to measurement variability. Serial ¹⁸F-FDG imaging in clinical trials investigating bone lesions from these patients, such as the ECOG-ACRIN EA1183 trial, benefit from confidence limits that allow interpretation of response.