Variations induced by body weight and background lesion normalization in standardized uptake value estimated by F18-FDG PET/CT

AIM: This work aims to study the impact of different SUV variants in terms of mean and maximum measures as well as various normalization methods with respect to body weight, body mass index, body surface area, and lean body mass in patients with lymphoma. METHODS: Sixty-nine patients (34 male–35 female) were retrospectively selected. All patients had undergone F18-FDG PET/CT using the standard imaging protocol. In the first part of this study, SUVmean and SUVmax of patients’ lesions and three background sites including liver, aorta, and muscle were determined. Then, the normalization of lesion SUV to body weight and body background sites was performed. The ratio of lesion SUVmax to body background sites (muscle, aorta, and liver) SUVmax was determined in addition to the ratio of lesion SUVmean to body background sites SUVmean. The second part of the study included the calculations of the body mass index (BMI), body surface area (BSA), and lean body mass (LBM). The normalization of lesion, liver, aorta, and muscle SUV to BMI, BSA, and LBM was calculated and compared to each other. RESULTS: After performing the appropriate statistical calculations, the results showed that there is a significant difference in SUV measurements between the three background sites. Lesions normalized to the liver were significantly lower than those normalized to aorta and muscle and the results also showed a higher magnitude of lesions normalized to muscle in comparison to the aorta. The SUVmax and SUVmean normalized to different body weight indices showed the lowest variation with BSA and BMI while being increasingly higher with lean body mass using the two methods James and Janmahasatian, respectively, and then highest with body weight. CONCLUSION: The SUVmax and SUVmean showed lower variance in comparison to other background regions. Less variation was also remarkable in SUVmean normalized to BSA and Janma lean mass and also when SUVmax is normalized to James lean body mass. The SUVmax normalized to lean (i.e., James) as well as SUVmean normalized to lean (i.e., Janma) and BSA showed a significant independence with body weight.