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

Abstract 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 trans , V p , K ep , V e and F p , 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 p (uniformity) in SCC group, K trans (uniformity), V e (kurtosis, Q10, Q25) in AC group, F p (skewness, kurtosis, energy), V e (Q75, Q90, Q95) in SCLC group was positively correlated with PTEN, and F p (entropy) in the SCLC group was negatively correlated with PTEN ( P < 0.05); K ep (Q5, Q10) in the SCLC group was positively correlated with P-Akt, and K ep (energy) in the SCLC group was negatively correlated with P-Akt ( P < 0.05); K ep (Q5) in SCC group and V p (meanvalue, Q75, Q90, Q95) in SCLC group was positively correlated with m-TOR, and V e (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.