Clinical value of quantitative imaging in patients with gastrointestinal liver metastases

Cancer of the gastrointestinal tract mainly metastasizes to the liver, which decreases overall survival and quality of life. This thesis investigated the use and clinical utility of quantitative imaging in patients with gastrointestinal tract liver metastases, specifically focusing on patients with colorectal liver cancer and neuroendocrine tumours. In colorectal cancer the main focus was on patients with liver metastases who were treated with ablation (a treatment that uses heat to destroy a metastasis). No evidence was available for quantitative imaging analyses to predict or early detect response, for long-term outcome of new liver metastases in patients with colorectal cancer that were treated with ablation. In this thesis, CT-scans of liver metastases were analysed to predict local recurrence and new liver metastases in this group of patients and showed potential to predict local recurrence. Only little evidence exists for quantitative image analysis in patients with liver metastases from neuroendocrine tumours. Therefore, this thesis also analysed CT-scans of patients with neuroendocrine liver metastases to evaluate the potential of quantitative imaging. This thesis shows promising results regarding the prediction of local recurrence with quantitative imaging analysis of liver metastases in patients with colorectal cancer, however, for patients with neuroendocrine tumours, results were disappointing.