Towards improved diagnosis: radiomics and quantitative biomarkers in 18 F-PSMA-1007 and 18 F-fluorocholine PET/CT for prostate cancer recurrence.

Objective: This study compared the radiomic features and quantitative biomarkers of 18 F-PSMA-1007 [prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)] and 18 F-fluorocholine (FCH) PET/computed tomography (CT) in prostate cancer patients with biochemical recurrence (BCR) enrolled in the phase 3, prospective, multicenter BIO-CT-001 trial.

Methods: A total of 106 patients with BCR, who had undergone primary definitive treatment for prostate cancer, were recruited to this prospective study. All patients underwent one PSMA and one FCH PET/CT examination in randomized order within 10 days. They were followed up for a minimum of 6 months. Pathology, prostate-specific antigen (PSA), PSA doubling time, PSA velocity, and previous or ongoing treatment were analyzed. Using LifeX software, standardized uptake value (SUV) maximum, SUV mean , PSMA and choline total volume (PSMA-TV/FCH-TV), and total lesion PSMA and choline (TL-PSMA/TL-FCH) of all identified metastatic lesions in both tracers were calculated.

Results: Of the 286 lesions identified, the majority 140 (49%) were lymph node metastases, 118 (41.2%) were bone metastases and 28 lesions (9.8%) were locoregional recurrences of prostate cancer. The median SUV max value was significantly higher for 18 F-PSMA compared with FCH for all 286 lesions (8.26 vs. 4.99, respectively, P  < 0.001). There were statistically significant differences in median SUV mean , TL-PSMA/FCH, and PSMA/FCH-TV between the two radiotracers (4.29 vs. 2.92, 1.97 vs. 1.53, and 7.31 vs. 4.37, respectively, P  < 0.001). The correlation between SUV mean /SUV max and PSA level was moderate, both for 18 F-PSMA ( r  = 0.44, P  < 0.001; r  = 0.44, P  < 0.001) and FCH ( r  = 0.35, P  < 0.001; r  = 0.41, P  < 0.001). TL-PSMA/FCH demonstrated statistically significant positive correlations with both PSA level and PSA velocity for both 18 F-PSMA ( r  = 0.56, P  < 0.001; r  = 0.57, P  < 0.001) and FCH ( r  = 0.49, P  < 0.001; r  = 0.51, P  < 0.001). While patients who received hormone therapy showed higher median SUV max values for both radiotracers compared with those who did not, the difference was statistically significant only for 18 F-PSMA ( P  < 0.05).

Conclusion: Our analysis using both radiomic features and quantitative biomarkers demonstrated the improved performance of 18 F-PSMA-1007 compared with FCH in identifying metastatic lesions in prostate cancer patients with BCR.