A New Tool for Extracting Static and Dynamic Parameters from [F]F-DOPA PET/CT in Pediatric Gliomas.

: PET imaging with [F]F-DOPA has demonstrated high potential for the evaluation and management of pediatric brain gliomas. Manual extraction of PET parameters is time-consuming, lacks reproducibility, and varies with operator experience. : In this study, we tested whether a semi-automated image processing framework could overcome these limitations. Pediatric patients with available static and/or dynamic [F]F-DOPA PET studies were evaluated retrospectively. We developed a Python software to automate clinical index calculations, including preprocessing to delineate tumor volumes from structural MRI, accounting for lesions with low [F]F-DOPA uptake. A total of 73 subjects with treatment-naïve low- and high-grade gliomas, who underwent brain MRI within two weeks of [F]F-DOPA PET, were included and analyzed. Static analysis was conducted on all subjects, while dynamic analysis was performed on 32 patients. : For 68 subjects, the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient for T/S between manual and ground truth segmentation was 0.91. Using our tool, ICC improved to 0.94. Our method demonstrated good reproducibility in extracting static tumor-to-striatum ratio ( = 0.357); however, significant differences were observed in tumor slope ( < 0.05). No significant differences were found in time-to-peak ( = 0.167) and striatum slope ( = 0.36). : Our framework aids in analyzing [F]F-DOPA PET images of pediatric brain tumors by automating clinical score extraction, simplifying segmentation and Time Activity Curve extraction, reducing user variability, and enhancing reproducibility.