8:45—9:00

Assessing prostate metastases is difficult with conventional radiographic modalities as few patients have soft tissue involvement and most have only bone lesions. Even with FDG PET, problems due to decreased avidity compared to other tumor types can occur. We assessed PET's ability to monitor changes in such tumors during an anti-angiogenic therapy. We measured changes in tumor blood flow (¹⁵O), blood volume (¹¹CO), ¹⁸F-FDG uptake and “metabolic volume” before and during thalidomide treatment, to see if these changes correlated with changes in PSA values.

Six patients with androgen-independent prostate cancer were imaged with ¹⁸F-FDG, ¹¹CO, and ¹⁵O water before and during (mean interval 63 days, range 55-76 days) thalidomide therapy (200-1200mg/day). Lesions were visually identified on FDG images (9 bone, 5 soft tissue lesions). VOI's were generated by 3D region growing, with a 50% maximum pixel threshold. These VOI's were registered with, and applied to, the ¹¹CO and water studies. Correlations with PSA values were done using the Spearman rank test.

The change in maximum (r = 0.77, p = 0.06) and mean FDG value (r = 0.83, p = 0.03), functional FDG volume (r = 0.66, p = 0.14), and 11-CO blood volume (r = 0.77, p = 0.06) all correlated with the change in PSA. Changes in blood flow values were smaller than the variance of the method for repeated measures, likely due to low flow values in bone.

Changes in blood volume measured by ¹¹CO, and the mean and peak activity and functional volume measured by ¹⁸F-FDG, correlate with changes in PSA and may be useful in monitoring anti-angiogenic therapy in prostate cancer.