TY - JOUR AU - Kim, Moon AU - Seifert, Robert AU - Fragemann, Jana AU - Kersting, David AU - Murray, Jacob AU - Jonske, Frederic AU - Pomykala, Kelsey L AU - Egger, Jan AU - Fendler, Wolfgang P AU - Herrmann, Ken AU - Kleesiek, Jens TI - Evaluation of thresholding methods for the quantification of [68Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 PET molecular tumor volume and their effect on survival prediction in patients with advanced prostate cancer undergoing [177Lu]Lu-PSMA-617 radioligand therapy. JO - European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging VL - 50 IS - 7 SN - 1619-7070 CY - Heidelberg [u.a.] PB - Springer-Verl. M1 - DKFZ-2023-00426 SP - 2196-2209 PY - 2023 N1 - 2023 Jun;50(7):2196-2209 AB - The aim of this study was to systematically evaluate the effect of thresholding algorithms used in computer vision for the quantification of prostate-specific membrane antigen positron emission tomography (PET) derived tumor volume (PSMA-TV) in patients with advanced prostate cancer. The results were validated with respect to the prognostication of overall survival in patients with advanced-stage prostate cancer.A total of 78 patients who underwent [177Lu]Lu-PSMA-617 radionuclide therapy from January 2018 to December 2020 were retrospectively included in this study. [68Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 PET images, acquired prior to radionuclide therapy, were used for the analysis of thresholding algorithms. All PET images were first analyzed semi-automatically using a pre-evaluated, proprietary software solution as the baseline method. Subsequently, five histogram-based thresholding methods and two local adaptive thresholding methods that are well established in computer vision were applied to quantify molecular tumor volume. The resulting whole-body molecular tumor volumes were validated with respect to the prognostication of overall patient survival as well as their statistical correlation to the baseline methods and their performance on standardized phantom scans.The whole-body PSMA-TVs, quantified using different thresholding methods, demonstrate a high positive correlation with the baseline methods. We observed the highest correlation with generalized histogram thresholding (GHT) (Pearson r (r), p value (p): r = 0.977, p < 0.001) and Sauvola thresholding (r = 0.974, p < 0.001) and the lowest correlation with Multiotsu (r = 0.877, p < 0.001) and Yen thresholding methods (r = 0.878, p < 0.001). The median survival time of all patients was 9.87 months (95 KW - Image biomarker (Other) KW - PSMA PET/CT (Other) KW - Prostate cancer (Other) KW - Thresholding (Other) KW - Tumor volume (Other) LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 C6 - pmid:36859618 DO - DOI:10.1007/s00259-023-06163-x UR - https://inrepo02.dkfz.de/record/274080 ER -