Impact of patient characteristic factors on the dynamics of liver glucose metabolism: Evaluation of multiparametric imaging with dynamic whole-body ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography

Aims: To assess the impact of various patient characteristics on the dynamics of liver glucose metabolism using automated multiparametric imaging with whole-body dynamic ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET). Materials and Methods: We retrospectively enrolled 540 patients who underwent whole-body dynamic FDG-PET. Three quantitative indices representing hepatic glucose metabolism [mean standardized uptake value normalized by lean body mass (SULmean), metabolic glucose rate (kinetic index) and distribution volume (DV)] were measured from multiparametric PET images produced automatically based on the Patlak plot model. Patient characteristics including age, sex, body mass index, fasting time, blood glucose level, and the presence of diabetes mellitus (DM) or hepatic steatosis (HS) were collected. We examined the correlations between the characteristic factors and three quantitative indices using multiple regression analysis. Results: The success rate of kinetic analysis using multiparametric PET imaging was 93.3% (504/540). Hepatic SULmean was significantly correlated with age (p <.001), sex (p <.001) and blood glucose level (p =.002). DV was significantly correlated with age (p =.033), sex (p <.001), body mass index (p =.002), fasting time (p =.043) and the presence of HS (p =.002). The kinetic index was significantly correlated with age (p <.001) and sex (p =.004). In the comparison of the healthy, DM and HS groups, patients with DM had a significantly increased SULmean, whereas patients with HS had a significantly decreased DV. Conclusions: Our results showed that liver glucose metabolism was influenced by various patient characteristic factors. Multiparametric FDG-PET imaging can be used to analyse the kinetics of liver glucose metabolism in routine clinical practice.