Research progress on PET-CT in radiotherapy planning for non-small cell lung cancer / 中华放射肿瘤学杂志

ABSTRACT

18F-FDG PET-CT is recommended for the diagnosis and treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and guiding the optimization of radiotherapy planning. The target area determined by biological information carried by functional images is defined as biological target volume (BTV). However, BTV significantly differs from the gross tumor volume (GTV) and internal target volume (ITV) defined by the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU) report. It is still a challenging task to directly apply BTV to radiotherapy planning. The limitation of PET image, the accuracy of fusion with auxiliary anatomic images and the influence of respiratory movement cause the uncertainty of BTV definition in NSCLC patients. Referring to different anatomical images, multiple approaches can be employed to achieve BTV motion information compensation. Application of PET-CT in predicting the prognosis of NSCLC patients after radiotherapy and distinguishing the recurrence risk of biological sub-target contribute to achieving the dose planning for radiotherapy planning.