Prognostic value of interim 18F-FDG PET in patients with diffuse large B-Cell lymphoma: SUV-based assessment at 4 cycles of chemotherapy

useful for tailoring a risk-adapted therapeutic strategy in lym-phoma. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether semiquantification of standardized uptake values (SUVs) may help to improve the prognostic value of 18F-FDG PET, compared with visual analysis, after 4 cycles of chemotherapy. Methods: In a previous report, we showed that a 65.7 % reduction in maxi-mal SUV (SUVmax) between baseline (PET0) and 2 cycles of che-motherapy (PET2) better predicted event-free survival in 92 prospective patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, by re-ducing false-positive interpretation of visual analysis. Eighty patients also underwent 18F-FDG PET after induction had been completed, at 4 cycles of chemotherapy (PET4). Images were interpreted visually (as negative or positive) and by computing the optimal percentage of SUVmax reduction between PET0 and PET4. Survival curves were estimated using Kaplan–Meie