Correlation between quantitative perfusion histogram parameters of DCE-MRI and PTEN, P-Akt and m-TOR in different pathological types of lung cancer.

Background: To explore if the quantitative perfusion histogram parameters of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) correlates with the expression of PTEN, P-Akt and m-TOR protein in lung cancer.

Methods: Thirty-three patients with 33 lesions who had been diagnosed with lung cancer were enrolled in this study. They were divided into three groups: squamous cell carcinoma (SCC, 15 cases), adenocarcinoma (AC, 12 cases) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC, 6 cases). Preoperative imaging (conventional imaging and DCE-MRI) was performed on all patients. The Exchange model was used to measure the phar- macokinetic parameters, including K, V, K, V and F, and then the histogram parameters meanvalue, skewness, kurtosis, uniformity, energy, entropy, quantile of above five parameters were analyzed. The expression of PTEN, P-Akt and m-TOR were assessed by immunohistochemistry. Spearman correlation analysis was used to compare the correlation between the quantitative perfusion histogram parameters and the expression of PTEN, P-Akt and m-TOR in different pathological subtypes of lung cancer.

Results: The expression of m-TOR (P = 0.013) and P-Akt (P = 0.002) in AC was significantly higher than those in SCC. V (uniformity) in SCC group, K (uniformity), V (kurtosis, Q10, Q25) in AC group, F (skewness, kurtosis, energy), V (Q75, Q90, Q95) in SCLC group was positively correlated with PTEN, and F (entropy) in the SCLC group was negatively correlated with PTEN (P < 0.05); K (Q5, Q10) in the SCLC group was positively correlated with P-Akt, and K (energy) in the SCLC group was negatively correlated with P-Akt (P < 0.05); K (Q5) in SCC group and V (meanvalue, Q75, Q90, Q95) in SCLC group was positively correlated with m-TOR, and V (meanvalue) in SCC group was negatively correlated with m-TOR (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: The quantitative perfusion histogram parameters of DCE-MRI was correlated with the expression of PTEN, P-Akt and m-TOR in different pathological types of lung cancer, which may be used to indirectly evaluate the activation status of PI3K/Akt/mTOR signal pathway gene in lung cancer, and provide important reference for clinical treatment.