Benign and malignant uptake in the postoperative diagnosis of gastrointestinal tumors: a comparative study of 68Ga-FAPI-04 and 18F-FDG.

BACKGROUND: Postoperative recurrence of gastrointestinal (GI) cancers is a common clinical challenge, and early accurate assessment is crucial. Conventional fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) imaging has limitations: poor efficacy in detecting hypometabolic tumors and physiological uptake in tissues such as the brain, liver and GI tract, and physiological or inflammatory uptake at anastomotic sites, often causing ambiguous results. In contrast, gallium-68-labeled fibroblast activation protein inhibitor 04 (68Ga-FAPI-04) targets fibroblast activation proteins (FAPs), offers low background uptake, is metabolism-neutral, and is promising for cancer diagnosis. Although superior to 18F-FDG in these aspects, 68Ga-FAPI-04 may also exhibit high uptake in some benign lesions, albeit rarely. This study aimed to compare the diagnostic efficiency of 18F-FDG positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) and 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET-magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI) in the postoperative evaluation of benign and malignant GI lesions. Our secondary objective was to quantitatively analyze the differences in 68Ga-FAPI-04 uptake between benign and malignant lesions and to determine whether they can be distinguished via quantitative metrics.

METHODS: This retrospective study included patients with GI cancer who underwent postoperative 18F-FDG PET/CT and subsequent 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET/MRI within 4 days for further evaluation. Lesions were classified as benign or malignant based on postoperative histopathology or follow-up. The diagnostic efficiency of 18F-FDG and 68Ga-FAPI-04 for malignant lesions was compared. Radiotracer uptake parameters [maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) and target-to-background ratios (TBRs)] of the two modalities were calculated and compared between modalities and lesion types. Diagnostic performance was evaluated via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the area under the curve (AUC).

RESULTS: Compared to 18F-FDG, 68Ga-FAPI-04 demonstrated higher specificity in detecting anastomotic sites (73.91% vs. 60.87%), with significant difference in the target-to-muscle ratio (TBR-M) of the recurrent anastomotic sites (5.44, 1.03 vs. 2.61, 1.91; P=0.04). In lymph node detection, 68Ga-FAPI-04 (64/68; 94.12%) showed significantly higher accuracy than did 18F-FDG (50/68, 73.53%) (P=0.001). Metastatic lymph nodes had higher 68Ga-FAPI-04 uptake, as indicated by TBR-M (5.06±2.03 vs. 3.26±2.03), target-to-aorta ratio (TBR-A) (5.66±2.68 vs. 2.96±1.71), and target-to-liver ratio (TBR-L) (5.61±3.28 vs. 2.18±1.26) (all P values <0.0001). However, the SUVmax was often high in nonmalignant areas (e.g., arthritis, benign pancreatic tumors, postinfarction fibrosis, and older adult uteri) and even similar to that in malignant metastases (6 8Ga-FAPI-04 SUVmax: nonmalignant areas 7.62±3.14 vs. malignant metastases 7.87±4.25, P=0.82), reducing specificity; meanwhile, 18F-FDG PET/CT had higher specificity (70.83% vs. 4.17%; P<0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS: 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET/MRI is superior to 18F-FDG PET/CT in detecting recurrent anastomotic sites and lymph node metastases. However, for other lesions, 68Ga-FAPI-04 uptake provides little ability to differentiate between benign and malignant lesions. Clinicians should integrate these findings with other clinical information for optimal results.