18f-fdopa kinetics in brain tumors.pdfVIP

18F-FDOPA Kinetics in Brain Tumors 1 1 2 1 1 Christiaan Schiepers , Wei Chen , Timothy Cloughesy , Magnus Dahlbom , and Sung-Cheng Huang 1Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California; and 2Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California Key Words: 18F-FDOPA; PET; brain tumors; kinetic modeling; L-3,4-Dihydroxy-6-18F-fluoro-phenyl-alanine (18F-FDOPA) is an factor analysis amino acid analog used to evaluate presynaptic dopaminergic J Nucl Med 2007; 48:1651–1661 neuronal function. Evaluation of tumor recurrence in neurooncol- DOI: 10.2967/jnumed.106.039321 ogy is another application. Here, the kinetics of 18F-FDOPA in brain tumors were investigated. Methods: A total of 37 patients underwent 45 studies; 10 had grade IV, 10 had grade III, and 13 had grade II brain tumors; 2 had metastases; and 2 had benign lesions. After 18F-DOPA was administered at 1.5–5 MBq/kg, dy- Imaging of glucose utilization is a routine diagnostic namic PET images were acquired for 75 min. Images were recon- procedure in the evaluation of cancer. Imaging of brain tumors structed with iterative algorithms, and corrections for attenuation and scatter were applied. Images representing venous struc- with labeled amino acids or analogs, such as methionine, tures, the striatum, and tumors were generated with factor anal- tyrosine, leucine, alanine, and isobutyric acid, has been ysis, and from these, input and output functions were deriv