Standardized uptake value (SUV_max) in ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT is correlated with the total number of main oncogenic anomalies in cancer patients

Figures & data

Figure 1. Relationship between SUV_max and the total number of oncogenic alterations with Pearson correlation coefficient r = 0.27 (p = .005). Left panel shows the scatter plot of all patients (n = 102) with circles represent individual datapoints. Right panel shows the box plot for all patients excluding the group with 6 oncogenic alterations because there was only one patient in that group. The central thick black line indicates the median, and the bottom and top of the rectangle are the 25^th (Q1) and 75^th (Q3) percentiles. The circles represent outlier SUV_max, defined as either larger than Q3 + 1.5 × IQR or smaller than Q1 – 1.5 × IQR, where IQR = Q3 – Q1 is the interquartile range. The horizontal “whiskers” represent the largest and smallest non-outlier observations in the data set

Table 1. Mean SUV_max and number of patients with or without genomic alteration (n = 102)

Gene	Mean SUVmax, number of patients		p value
	With genomic alteration	Without genomic alteration
TP53	9.0 (n = 47)	6.3 (n = 55)	0.002*
PAM	8.7 (n = 40)	6.8 (n = 62)	0.042*
EGFR	7.6 (n = 28)	7.5 (n = 74)	0.98
MEK	8.9 (n = 18)	7.2 (n = 84)	0.16
CYCLIN	7.8 (n = 39)	7.4 (n = 63)	0.68
WNT	8.2 (n = 17)	7.4 (n = 85)	0.52
ALK	11.9 (n = 3)	7.4 (n = 99)	0.09
MYC	8.7 (n = 14)	7.4 (n = 88)	0.31
MET	6.0 (n = 2)	7.6 (n = 100)	0.63
FGF/FGFR	6.8 (n = 21)	7.7 (n = 81)	0.40

*Among 11 common oncogenic alterations, only TP53 and PAM alterations were significantly related to SUV_max.

Figure 2. FDG PET projection image in a patient with adenocarcinoma of the lung. The biopsied right lung hypermetabolic lesion had SUV_max of 20.2 (arrow). This lesion had a total number of main oncogenic alterations of 5

Figure 3. FDG PET projection image in a patient with adenocarcinoma of the lung. The biopsied right lung hypermetabolic lesion had SUV_max of 4.9 (arrow). This lesion had a total number of main oncogenic alterations of 0