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Keywords:
Ear / Nose / Throat, Oncology, Head and neck, PET-MR, Diagnostic procedure, Molecular imaging, Cancer, Tissue characterisation
Authors:
M. Gawlitza, S. Purz, A. Boehm, H. Barthel, T. Kahn, O. Sabri, P. Stumpp; Leipzig/DE
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2014/C-0264
Aims and objectives
18Fluor-Fluorodesoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography with combined Magnetic Resonance Imaging (18F-FDG-PET/MRI) seems to be a promising modality for imaging of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) as in this type of malignancy the infiltration of surrounding structures is important for local staging and for surgical and radiotherapy planning [1].
With the high soft-tissue contrast of MRI and the superior ability of 18F-FDG-PET to detect nodal and distant metastatic tumour spread prior to morphological changes,
the advent of combined PET/MRI will open new perspectives in non-invasive imaging [2].
The combination of PET with MRI also opens up numerous options to acquire multiple multimodal molecular imaging parameters simultaneously.
This may contribute to a more detailed characterization of cellular and subcellular processes in vivo [3].
We hereby report about a study in which glucose metabolism (assessed by 18F-FDG-PET),
tumour cellularity (measured by diffusion-weighted imaging - DWI) and microcirculatory parameters (estimated by T1-weighted dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI - T1w-DCE) were simultaneously acquired in patients with HNSCC.