Imaging Tumor Metabolism in Patients with Head & Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Abstract

Motivation: Changes in metabolic imaging biomarkers offer tremendous potential for assessing response and optimizing treatment for patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Goal(s): To assess the translational viability of metabolic MRI with hyperpolarized (HP) pyruvate in patients with HNSCC. Approach: Patients with HNSCC are recruited into a prospective imaging study and scanned with HP [1-13C]-pyruvate in a test-retest paradigm before start of therapy. Results: Preliminary data indicates that reproducibility of semi-quantitative measures of tumor metabolism are high, with correlation between test-retest measurements >80% in all voxels that exceed a minimum SNR threshold and correlation >96% in regions identified as tumor. Impact: These results demonstrate that metabolic MRI with hyperpolarized [1-13C]-pyruvate generates sufficient SNR and spatiotemporal resolution to permit reproducible measurement of tumor metabolism in patients with HNSCC.