Simplified Kinetic Analysis of Tumor 18F-FDG Uptake: A Dynamic Approach

Standardized uptake value (SUV) is often used to quantify 18F-FDG tumor use. Although useful, SUV suffers from known quan-titative inaccuracies. Simplified kinetic analysis (SKA) methods have been proposed to overcome the shortcomings of SUV. Most SKA methods rely on a single time point (SKA-S), not on tumor uptake rate. We describe a hybrid between Patlak anal-ysis and existing SKA-S methods, using multiple time points (SKA-M) but reduced imaging time and without measurement of an input function. We compared SKA-M with a published SKA-S method and with Patlak analysis. Methods: Twenty-seven dy-namic 18F-FDG scans were performed on 11 cancer patients. A population-based 18F-FDG input function was generated from an independent patient population. SKA-M was calculated us-ing this population input function and either a short, late, dy-namic acquisition over the tumor (starting 25–35 min after in