Nucl Med Mol Imaging.  2018 Aug;52(4):279-286. 10.1007/s13139-018-0524-y.

Measurement of ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC Uptake in the Thoracic Aorta and Its Correlation with Cardiovascular Risk

Affiliations
  • 1Department of Nuclear Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, South Korea. paengjc@snu.ac.kr

Abstract

PURPOSE
⁶⁸Ga-labeled 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-N,N"²,N"³,N"´-tetraacetic acid-D-Phe1-Tyr3-octreotide (⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC) is taken up by activated macrophages, which accumulate in active inflammatory lesions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC PET/CT for assessment of vulnerable plaque, by evaluating correlation between aortic uptake of ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC and cardiovascular risk factors.
METHODS
Fifty patients with neuroendocrine tumors who underwent ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC PET/CT were retrospectively enrolled. The uptakes in the thoracic aorta were measured by two methods: multi-sample region-of-interest (ROI) method and single volume-of-interest (VOI) method. TBRmax-avg, TBRmean-avg, TBRmax-VOI, and TBRmean-VOI were defined by maximum and mean target-to-background ratio (TBR) from the multi-sample ROI method and the single VOI method, respectively.
RESULTS
Framinghamrisk score (FRS) exhibited significant correlations with TBRmax-avg and TBRmean-avg, aswell as TBRmax-VOI (r = 0.3389-0.4593, P < 0.05 for all). TBRmax-avg and TBRmax-VOI were significantly higher in high FRS group than in low FRS group (1.48 ± 0.21 vs. 1.70 ± 0.17, P < 0.001 for TBRmax-avg and 1.90 ± 0.33 vs. 2.25 ± 0.36, P = 0.002 for TBRmax-VOI). TBR exhibited high correlations between the two measuring methods (r = 0.9684, P < 0.001 for TBRmean-avg and TBRmean-VOI and r = 0.8681, P < 0.001 for TBRmax-avg and TBRmax-VOI).
CONCLUSIONS
⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC uptake in the thoracic aorta exhibited a significant correlation with cardiovascular risk factors, which suggests the feasibility of ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC PET for vulnerable plaque imaging, with a simple measurement of the single VOI method that is comparable to the multi-sample ROI-based approach.

Keyword

PET/CT; Atherosclerosis; ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATOC; Cardiovascular risk

MeSH Terms

Aorta, Thoracic*
Atherosclerosis
Humans
Macrophages
Methods
Neuroendocrine Tumors
Positron-Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography
Retrospective Studies
Risk Factors
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