Value of PET/CT and PET/MR in diagnosing primary cervical cancer and evaluating pelvic lymph node metastasis: Comparative study / 中国医学影像技术

ABSTRACT

Objective To compare the application value between PET/CT and PET/MR in diagnosing primary cervical cancer and pelvic lymph node metastasis.Methods Forty cases of cervical cancer were prospectively enrolled.PET/CT and PET/MR examinations were performed before treatment.All imaging data were evaluated by two experienced radiologists.The diagnostic consistency and difference of PET/CT and PET/MR were evaluated with Cohen's Kappa and paired Chi-square test.ROC curve was adopted to observe the value in diagnosing pelvic lymph node metastasis of cervical cancer.The lesions' visibility and diagnostic confidence of metastatic lymph nodes on PET/CT and PET/MR images were compared with Wilcoxon signed ranks test.Results Compared with the gold standard,the diagnostic consistency of PET/MR staging was much higher than that of PET/CT (x2 =10.286,P=0.002).The area under ROC curve of PET/CT and PET/MR on lymph node metastasis had no significant difference (Z=0.83,P＞0.05).No significant differences in lesion visibility between PET/CT and PET/MR images were detected in the evaluation of metastatic lymph nodes (P=0.157),while PET/MR revealed higher values regarding diagnostic confidence (P=0.014).Conclusion Both PET/CT and PET/MR provide high diagnostic value in detecting primary cervical cancer,but PET/MR has greater diagnostic superiority in the correct identification of cervical cancer stage and pelvic lymph node metastasis.PET/MR is expected to be a new technique for replacement of PET/CT in evaluation of cervical lesions.