Spinal cord FDG PET uptake in healthy adults: an AI-driven segmentation study

作者：R Kata, Darshil Patel, Om H. Gandhi, Divya Sankisa, Devi K. Schwartz, Shiv Patil, William Lee, Ondrej Fanta, Thomas Werner, Poul Flemming Høilund-Carlsen, Mona-Elisabeth Revheim, Abass Alavi · 发表于：European Spine Journal · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1007/s00586-026-10049-5 · 研究领域：Radiomics and Machine Learning in Medical Imaging、Medical Imaging and Analysis、Medical Imaging Techniques and Applications

PURPOSE: F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) Positron Emission Tomography (PET)/Computerized Tomography (CT) is an important imaging modality in oncology, but its use in spinal cord assessment is limited due to a lack of baseline metabolic reference values. Regional spinal cord FDG uptake, especially in healthy populations, remains poorly defined, limiting accurate delineation between physiological and pathological uptake. The study aimed to quantify regional FDG uptake in the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spinal cord in healthy adults, and evaluate associations between FDG uptake and demographic factors, including age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and inflammatory/metabolic biomarkers. A secondary aim was to apply artificial intelligence (AI)-driven segmentation to facilitate standardized region-of-interest extraction across spinal cord levels. METHODS: This was a retrospective, cross-sectional observational study conducted using data from the CAMONA clinical trial at Odense University Hospital, Denmark. 76 healthy adult participants (mean age 44.66 ± 14.04 years; 53.9% male) were selected from a total of 139 subjects in the CAMONA trial. All participants were free from chronic medical conditions. Primary outcomes include mean standardized uptake values (SUVmean) of FDG in the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spinal cord regions. Secondary outcomes include correlations of SUVmean with age, sex, BMI, HbA1c, and inflammatory biomarkers (CRP, WBC, homocysteine, fibrinogen). Participants u...