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Background 18 F -fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) plays an important role in the staging and response assessment of lymphoma patients. Our aim was to explore the predictive relevance of metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) in patients with early stage Hodgkin lymphoma treated within the German Hodgkin Study Group HD16 trial. Methods 18 F-FDG PET/CT images were available for MTV and TLG analysis in 107 cases from the HD16 trial. We calculated MTV and TLG using three different threshold methods (SUV 4.0, SUV 41% and SUV 140%L ), and then performed receiver-operating-characteristic analysis to assess the predictive impact of these parameters in predicting an adequate therapy response with PET negativity after 2 cycles of chemotherapy. Results All three threshold methods analyzed for MTV and TLG calculation showed a positive correlation with the PET response after 2 cycles chemotherapy. The largest area under the curve (AUC) was observed using the fixed threshold of SUV 4.0 for MTV- calculation (AUC 0.69 [95% CI 0.55–0.83]) and for TLG-calculation (AUC 0.69 [0.55–0.82]). The calculations for MTV and TLG with a relative threshold showed a lower AUC: using SUV 140%L AUCs of 0.66 [0.53–0.80] for MTV and 0.67 for TLG [0.54–0.81]) were observed, while with SUV 41% an AUC of 0.61 [0.45–0.76] for MTV, and an AUC 0.64 [0.49–0.80]) for TLG were seen. Conclusions MTV and TLG do have a predictive value after two cycles ABVD in early stage Hodgkin lymphoma, particularly when using the fixed threshold of SUV 4.0 for MTV and TLG calculation. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00736320 .