ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Imaging and Image-directed Interventions
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in PET-CT Imaging - Vol. IIView all articles
18F-FDG PET/CT-derived parameters for differentiating colorectal carcinoma from adenoma
Provisionally accepted
- Yuncheng Central Hospital, Shanxi Medical University, Yuncheng, China
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Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate the ability of 18F-FDG PET/CT-derived parameters to differentiate between colorectal cancer and adenoma. Methods: One-hundred and twenty-five patients with colorectal cancers and 57 with colorectal adenomas were retrospectively analyzed. Parameters assessed on 18F-FDG PET/CT included maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), metabolic tumor volume (MTV), and total lesion glycolysis (TLG). Mann–Whitney U-test was used to compare parameters between groups, and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to assess their discriminatory performance Results: Colorectal carcinomas demonstrated significantly higher SUVmax (P = 0.003), SUVmean (P = 0.005), MTV (P < 0.001) and TLG (P< 0.001). The AUCs for differentiating colorectal carcinomas and adenomas were 0.657, 0.649, 0.979, and 0.987, for SUVmax, SUVmean, MTV, and TLG, respectively. The optimal cut-off value for MTV and TLG was 3.5 and 22.6, respectively, yielding a high sensitivity and specificity (96.5% and 92.5% for MTV, 96.5% and 95.5% for TLG). The optimal cut-off value for SUVmax and SUVmean was 8.8 and 4.4, respectively, yielding a sensitivity of 88.6% for SUVmax and 95.6% for SUVmean, and a low specificity of 42.5% for SUVmax, and 32.5% for SUVmean. Conclusions: Of the 18F-FDG PET/CT parameters investigated, MTV and TLG showed high accuracy in distinguishing colorectal carcinoma from adenomas, and were significantly higher in colorectal carcinomas than in adenomas.
Keywords: 18F-FDG, adenomas, COLORECTAL CARCINOMAS, parameters, PET/CT
Received: 26 Aug 2025; Accepted: 02 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zhang, Li and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yuan Zhang
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