Abstract
Purpose
We performed a prospective comparison of the diagnostic capability of integrated fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) (PET/CT), 3-T whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (WB-MRI) and their combination in detecting malignancy in treated oropharyngeal or hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OHSCC).
Methods
Seventy-nine OHSCC patients at a high risk of residual disease or suspected to have recurrence after the completion of chemoradiation were included in the study. All patients underwent PET/CT and WB-MRI within 10 days of each other. Histology and follow-up data were used as the reference standard. The McNemar test was used to compare sensitivity and specificity, while the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used for comparison of diagnostic capabilities.
Results
Twenty-nine patients (36.7%) had residual/recurrent tumours or second primary tumours. Overall, there was a trend towards increased sensitivity and diagnostic capability for PET/CT compared with WB-MRI (72.4 vs 55.2%, p = 0.13; 0.826 vs 0.753, p = 0.24, respectively). The diagnostic capability of combined interpretation of PET/CT and WB-MRI was similar to PET/CT alone (0.827 vs 0.826, p = 0.97) but was significantly higher than WB-MRI alone (0.827 vs 0.753, p = 0.04).
Conclusion
PET/CT showed a trend towards higher diagnostic capability than 3-T WB-MRI in detecting residual/recurrent tumours or second primary tumours in OHSCC. The combined use of PET/CT and WB-MRI provided more added value to WB-MRI alone than to PET/CT alone. Additional PET/CT can be useful in patients with questionable MRI findings of malignancy.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge grants from the National Science Council-Taiwan (NSC97-2314-B -182A -100-MY2) and from the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CMRPG360083).
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Ng, SH., Chan, SC., Yen, TC. et al. PET/CT and 3-T whole-body MRI in the detection of malignancy in treated oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal carcinoma. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 38, 996–1008 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-011-1740-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-011-1740-1