Cancer Staging with Whole-Body DWI
Japanese researchers are evaluating the utility of whole-body diffusion weighted MRI (DWI) to assess cancer metastases. The approach may supplement imaging with whole-body anatomical MRI or whole-body FDG PET.
The team completed one study to stage disease in a group of 74 lung cancer patients. Findings indicate that whole-body DWI had superior sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy compared to both FDG PET and whole-body MRI. The researchers did not evaluate FDG PET/CT, which is considered superior to PET alone for cancer assessment.
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May 24, 2007 Related topics: Diagnostic, Radiology, Hematology & Oncology