Quantitating whole lesion tumor biology in rectal cancer MRI: taking a lesson from FDG-PET tumor metrics

To determine the value of novel whole tumor metrics in DWI-MRI and DCE-MRI of rectal cancer treatment assessment.

This retrospective study included 24 uniformly treated patients with rectal adenocarcinoma who underwent MRI including diffusion-weighted (DW) and dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) sequences, before and after chemoradiotherapy. Two experienced readers independently measured tumor volume and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) on DWI-MRI and tumor volume and transfer constant K ^trans on DCE-MRI. In addition, we explored and defined Total Lesion Diffusion (TLD) as Total DWI tumor volume multiplied by mean volumetric ADC and Total Lesion Perfusion (TLP) as the total DCE tumor volume multiplied by the mean volumetric K ^trans. These metrics were correlated with histopathologic percent tumor regression in the resected specimen (%TR). Inter-reader agreement was assessed using the concordance correlation coefficient (CCC).

For both readers, post-treatment TLP revealed comparable correlations with %TR compared with K ^trans (reader 1; Spearman’s rho = − 0.36 vs. − 0.32, reader 2; Spearman’s rho = − 0.32 vs. − 0.28). In addition, TLP afforded the highest inter-reader agreement at post-treatment among TLP, DCE vol, and K ^trans (CCC: 0.64 vs. 0.36 vs. 0.35). Post-treatment TLD showed similar correlation with %TR as DWI volume in reader 1 and superior correlation with %TR for reader 2 (reader 1; Spearman’s rho − 0.56 vs. − 0.57, reader 2; Spearman’s rho − 0.59 vs. − 0.45).

The novel tumor metrics TLD and TLP revealed similar results to established metrics for correlation with tumor response with equivalent or superior inter-reader agreements and we recommend that these be studied in larger trials.