MTV

Purpose

Up to one-third of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patients fail to achieve complete remission during first-line treatment or experience relapse. Salvage treatment regimens lead to modest cure rates Therefore, more accurate prognostic markers are essential to identify patients at high risk for progression or relapse. These poor responders might benefit from an early switch to novel therapies aiming to improve outcome.

In lymphoma, the baseline [18]FDG-PET scan is currently used for staging of the disease. Semi-quantitative tumor-related [18]FDG-PET parameters, especially baseline metabolic tumor volume (MTV), have shown to be predictive of outcome, as MTV reflects the FDG avid tumor burden in patients.

Objectives

  • To identify the optimal semi-automated segmentation method or methods approach to delineate DLBCL lesions at baseline, i-PET and EoT

  • To determine the best expression of the relationship between MTV and survival

  • To compare MTV with IPI categories for prediction of outcome

  • To compare the combination of MTV with individual IPI components to decide on the best predictive model

  • To explore the added value of MTV assessments at i-PET and EoT to further improve clinical outcome predicting


Overall aim

To validate MTV as a prognostic and treatment predictive biomarker in first-line DLBCL patients.