The clinical value of FAPI PET/CT in delineating target volumes for nasopharyngeal carcinoma

作者：Wansu Xu, Yihe Zou, Yang Zhang, Qiyuan Lv, Xia Deng, Kejie Li, Xuemei Zhang, Junhui Wang, Wenliang Yu, Raoying Xie, Meng Su, Huijuan He, Changlin Zou · 发表于：European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1007/s00259-025-07347-3 · 被引用次数：6 · 研究领域：Peptidase Inhibition and Analysis、Cardiac Structural Anomalies and Repair、Protease and Inhibitor Mechanisms

To evaluate the efficacy of 18 F-AIF-NOTA-FAPI-04 PET/CT in improving the accuracy of target volume delineation in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Automatic delineation of the primary tumor target volume was conducted for 21 newly diagnosed NPC patients using 18 F-AIF-NOTA-FAPI-04 PET/CT images, which applied a threshold-based segmentation with 5% increments from 20 to 60% of SUVmax. Manual delineation of the primary tumor was performed on MRI images. The study analyzed the gross target volumes (GTV) discrepancies between 18 F-AIF-NOTA-FAPI-04 PET/CT and MRI. Furthermore, we compared how the two imaging modalities affected the assessment of the primary tumors’ involvement of bone-related structures and soft tissue (mucosa) infiltration. There were variations in the primary tumor target volume across the different imaging methods. There were no significant differences observed between GTV-FAPI 20%, GTV-FAPI 25%, and GTV-FAPI 30% compared to GTV-MRI. Among them, GTV-FAPI 20% showed the closest similarity to GTV-MRI. 18 F-AIF-NOTA-FAPI-04 PET/CT was superior to MRI in detecting soft tissue and bone tissue involvement in primary tumors. 18 F-AIF-NOTA-FAPI-04 PET/CT enhances precision in delineating GTV for NPC and demonstrates clinical utility in T-staging.