Purpose

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a heterogeneous entity, with patients exhibiting a wide range of outcomes. Pre-therapeutic stratification is important because patients who are R-CHOP refractory have a very poor prognosis. Patients with poor prognostic characteristics should be offered first-line treatment with new targeted drugs in addition to R-CHOP. However, identification of poor responders is not possible with the Revised-International-Prognostic-Index(R-IPI) or IPI risk scores. Radiomics-analysis on [18]FDG-PET provides semi-quantitative features of tumor characteristics as intensity, shape, volume, localization and texture. Importantly, this [18]FDG-PET radiomics approach permits in-depth whole-body intra- and inter-tumor analyses, which is advantageous to histology analyses, which are typically based on a single biopsied lesion. Recent data suggest that radiomics features carry prognostic information in addition to clinical and genetic information

Overall aim:

To identify and validate prognostic radiomics features (both at patient- and lesional level) from baseline PET-scans in DLBCL, and examine their performance in addition to R-IPI, and to genomic data. Such PET tools need to be robust, clinically applicable and technically well-characterized.

Objectives

  • To identify potential prognostically relevant image characteristics for DLBCL patients

  • To assess the sensitivity of image characteristics to the variability of image quality

  • To assess the repeatability and reproducibility of the potential prognostically relevant image characteristics

  • To develop a prognostic model to predict 2 years of progression free survival in DLBCL patients

  • To assess the potential added prognostic significance of genomic

  • To clinically validate the prognostic model using the other clinical studies of the PETRA database

Publications

Eertink, J. J., Pfaehler, E., Wiegers, S. E., van de Brug, T., Lugtenburg, P. J., Hoekstra, O. S., Zijlstra, J. M., de Vet, H., & Boellaard, R. (2021). Quantitative radiomics features in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: does segmentation method matter?. Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine, jnumed.121.262117. https://doi.org/10.2967/jnumed.121.262117

Eertink, J. J., van de Brug, T., Wiegers, S. E., Zwezerijnen, G., Pfaehler, E., Lugtenburg, P. J., van der Holt, B., de Vet, H., Hoekstra, O. S., Boellaard, R., & Zijlstra, J. M. (2021). 18F-FDG PET baseline radiomics features improve the prediction of treatment outcome in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, 10.1007/s00259-021-05480-3.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-021-05480-3