Noninvasive evaluation of hypoxia in rabbit VX2 lung transplant tumors using spectral CT parameters and texture analysis

Aim Noninvasive evaluation of hypoxia in rabbit VX2 lung transplant tumors using spectral CT parameters and texture analysis. Materials and methods Twenty-five VX2 lung transplant tumors of twenty-two rabbits were included in the study. Contrast-enhanced spectral CT scanning in the arterial phase (AP) and venous phase (VP) was performed. Tumors were divided into strong and weak hypoxic groups by hypoxic probe staining results. Spectral CT image-related parameters [70 keV CT value, normalized iodine concentration (NIC), slope of spectral HU curve (λ HU )] were measured and the texture analysis on the monochromatic images was performed. Imaging parameters and texture features between tumors with different hypoxic degrees were compared and their diagnostic efficacies for predicting hypoxia in lung cancers were analyzed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Results NIC in VP and λ HU in VP of the strong hypoxic group were significantly higher than those in the weak hypoxic group ( p