A Pre-Treatment PET And CT-Derived Model for Progression-Free Survival in Early Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Abstract

The maximum value of the standardized uptake value (SUV) and tumor diameter have been associated with progression after stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this work, we explored whether other tumor parameters based on pre-SBRT PETs and CTs predict progression-free survival (PFS) in this patient population. 412 patients treated between 2006 and 2017 were included. Patients had to have PETs and CTs available within three months prior to SBRT start. The median prescription dose was 50Gy in 5 fractions. The planning-CT gross tumor volumes (GTVs) were propagated onto the pre-treatment PETs and CTs using b-spline deformable image registration. PET intensity features (90th percentile, entropy, maximum, mean, peak, robust mean absolute deviation, SD, valley) and CT shape features (compactness, diameter, elliptic axes, elongation, flatness, number of lobules/peaks/spicules, sphericity, surface area, surface to volume ratio, volume) were extracted. Data were split into training and hold-out validation subsets (n = 283, 123; 70%, 30%). In the training subset, the imaging features and six patient characteristics (age, gender, histology, performance status, prior surgery, tumor location) were tested for association with PFS using Cox Proportional Hazards regression with re-sampling (bootstrapping with 1000 samples). Significance was denoted at p≤0.0019 (corrected for 26 tests). A bootstrapped forward-stepwise multivariate analysis was undertaken including only non-strongly correlated predictors (Spearman’s rank, |Rs|<0.70). The most frequently selected model was explored in the validation subset in which model performance was assessed using the c-index and the prediction-stratified high and low risk tertiles (HR, LR) of the observed PFS were compared. Nineteen of the 20 identified candidate predictors were either PET or CT features (p-value range: 3E-9, 1.2E-3). The intra-imaging modality correlation between features was strong (median |Rs|: PET: 0.93; CT: 0.76) and only four features were passed on to multivariate analysis: PET entropy, CT number of peaks, CT major axis, and gender. The most frequently selected model included PET entropy and CT number of peaks; the c-index in the validation subset was 0.77 and the prediction-stratified survival indicated a clear separation between the observed HR and LR: e.g. a PFS of 60% was observed at 12 months in HR vs. 22 months in LR. This PET and CT-based model identified the SUV distribution randomness (entropy) and spiculated tumor pattern on CTs as the most important features in predicting PFS in early stage NSCLC. The associated performance on the hold-out validation subset was good and its use has the potential to further improve the prediction of response to SBRT for this patient population. This model will be used to identify high-risk patients based on the predicted PFS in an upcoming phase II study on adjuvant immunotherapy.