Enrico Martin

125 Diagnostic accuracy of non-invasive tests FDG-PET characteristics Twenty studies describing a total of 3 FDG-PET characteristics were included for quantitative synthesis. 15,16,48–57,20–22,37,44–47 These studies included a total of 1850 tumors in 924 patients. Most studies scanned 60 minutes after FDG injection, except for two studies that scanned at 45 and 90 minutes post-injection respectively. Seven studies included in meta-analyses were at high risk of bias for patient selection, mainly because they included histologically confirmed lesions only or patients who had received treatment prior to imaging were excluded ( Supplementary File 1 ). 20–22,47,50,55,57 Two studies were at high risk of bias for the use of their reference standard which was a follow-up period of ≤6 months. 46,51 One study scored a high risk of bias for index test, because the nuclear medicine physician was not blinded to the pathology report. 58 Figure 3 SROC’s of PET characteristics Twelve studies reported on SUVmax ( Table 2 ). 16,20,49–51,21,22,37,44–48 Thresholds varied from 2.35-6.1. Pooled sensitivity and specificity were 0.94 (95% CI: 0.91-0.97) and 0.81 (95% CI: 0.76-0.87) respectively. Pooled pLR was 5.22 (3.74-7.51) and nLR was 0.07 (0.03- 0.12). The forest plot and the 95% prediction region in the SROC plot demonstrated moderate heterogeneity between studies ( Figure 3 & Supplementary Figure 2 ). Higher specificity was found in studies that included a higher proportion of MPNST ( Supplementary Table 3 ). 6