Prior reports have suggested that delayed FDG-PET oncology imaging can improve the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) for known lesions. models with different rates of FDG dephosphorylation (k4). For each pair of tumor and normal tissue TACs 600 PET sinogram realizations were generated and images were reconstructed using OSEM. Test Desmopressin Acetate statistics for each tumor and normal tissue region of interest were output from your computer model observers and evaluated using an ROC analysis with the calculated AUC providing a measure of lesion detectability. For the nonreversible model (k4 = 0) the AUC increased in 11/23 (48%) of patients for one to two hours after the current standard post-radiotracer injection imaging window of one Desmopressin Acetate hour. This improvement was driven by increased tumor/normal tissue contrast before the impact of increased noise due to radiotracer decay began to dominate the imaging transmission. As k4 BMP4 was increased from 0 to 0.01 min?1 the time of maximum detectability shifted earlier as the decreasing FDG concentration in the tumor lowered the CNR. These results imply that delayed PET imaging may reveal low-conspicuity lesions that would have normally gone undetected. = K1k3/(k2 + k3). The Desmopressin Acetate mean flux of group one was significantly higher than that for group two (two-sided t-test p=0.0001). The rate of phosphorylation k3 Desmopressin Acetate for group one was also higher than that for group two (p=0.012). The rate constants also help explain why the FDG concentration peaked early (between 10 and 30 minutes) in seven of the tumors. These tumors comprised 6/7 (86%) of the patients in group two with the remaining patient a part of group three. This early peak could be due to dephosphorylation (k4 > 0). Lodge et al. [4] have noted that there are other causes of decreasing activity concentrations such as unmetabolized FDG clearing more rapidly from your tissue precursor pool back into the blood (k2) possibly due to a low fixation rate (k3). Vriens et al. [33] have reported that low metabolic tumor regions have a higher blood volume and therefore higher uptake of FDG in the early time points post-injection. With a low phosphorylation rate in these regions the FDG is able to obvious back into the blood pool. Our results showed that this detectability trends as a function of time are not uniform and that more information is required to be able to select the optimum imaging time. Ideally the optimum uptake time for detection could be predicted by tumor type before imaging. We explored possible associations between the detectability styles with tumor characteristics and no significant correlations were found when we performed a multivariate analysis of tumor size grade hormone receptor status (HER2neu estrogen progesterone) and Ki-67. It was expected that this groups would individual based on Ki-67 and the observed lack of correlation could be due to the low sample size. The correlation between the biology and kinetic parameters may also have been obscured by the small tumor size and lack of partial volume correction. The link between biology and imaging could become more obvious by testing delayed imaging in a patient study simply asking the patients to return for any delayed scan after their scheduled clinical scan. Recommending a patient-specific imaging time may ultimately be unfeasible or impractical. By better understanding the trade-offs with imaging time a single time point based on the average response for a group of patients could be recommended. Group two showed that even for patients who do not benefit from delayed imaging the tumor detectability may only slightly decrease with increased imaging time post-injection. Further the data acquisition time could be lengthened to compensate for the increased noise while taking advantage of the increased contrast at later time points. Modern 3D PET systems and time-of-flight technology could also reduce the impact of noise. Finally although we focused on single time point imaging that requires minimal change to the current workflow and would be more feasible to implement clinically it may be that dynamic or multiple time point imaging would be helpful by providing the extra uptake information. Our study experienced some limitations. Patient data is limited to 60-minute dynamic scans for 23 patients with a lower to intermediate grade tumor and favorable (ER+/HER2-) subtype of.