The ASPS mets can grow very slowly, much slower than most other cancer/sarcoma mets, and the changes might be not registered by even a very experiences radiologists, so the situation will be reported as stable even if it is not. To detect the growth in ASPS, the scan have to be compared with the sufficient interval in between them - a year or even few years. Ivan had detected the growth by himself in the cases when our radiologists stated that the situation is stable because the growth was only 1 mm a year and for the radiologist it is a statistically insignificant consistent with the standard deviation of the device, but when Ivan compared it over 4 years, the growth was 4 mm (roughly from 6 mm to 10 mm) which is already significant to report a growth and start planning what to do about this particular nodule, because 10 mm is the most optimal size for the local ablations.
There is his tip as how to compare the scans that are often done on the different CT scan units. He downloaded a free software to view the scans (http://www.microdicom.com/) in order to be able to compare them more consistently. The problem is that scans from different machines come with different versions of eFilm Lite, which renders the image differently and makes comparison inexact and this software overcomes this limitation.
It allows measuring nodules to fractions of a millimeter. When comparing two scans, it's just random noise. However, when looking at 6 of them over 4 years it's somewhat useful.
How to compare CT scans
Re: How to compare CT scans
Ty Olga 
I will look into using this ...
I will look into using this ...
“Many times it is much more important to know what kind of patient has the disease, than what kind of disease the patient has”.
"The microbe is nothing, the soil is everything)""
Claude Bernard~
Amanda
"The microbe is nothing, the soil is everything)""
Claude Bernard~
Amanda
Re: How to compare CT scans
The least what ASPS patients can do is to talk to their radiologists and educate them that ASPS is often grows very slowly and specifically ask them to compare to the scans taken 2-3 years ago.
We've met with Ivan's oncologists today to discuss his recent scan and no surprise here - the radiologist reported the situation as stable when it fact Ivan already found the slow growth in one nodule. The radiologist did a good job overall and compared the last scan to a few scans before, not only to a previous one - but although he was going back as far as 1 year, he could not detect the growth that was only seen if the scans were compared with few years interval.
We've met with Ivan's oncologists today to discuss his recent scan and no surprise here - the radiologist reported the situation as stable when it fact Ivan already found the slow growth in one nodule. The radiologist did a good job overall and compared the last scan to a few scans before, not only to a previous one - but although he was going back as far as 1 year, he could not detect the growth that was only seen if the scans were compared with few years interval.
Olga
Re: How to compare CT scans
Could someone with more experience reading scans perhaps go through how to identify nodules in CT scans? I am trying to look at my lung scans, but am not any good at knowing whether artifacts in the scan are tumors or veins or other bodily structures. How do you tell the difference? Is the process any different for other organs on CT scans (eg. liver, etc.)?