The effectiveness of whole body magnetic resonance imaging (Diffusion-weighted imaging and fat saturated T2-weighted imaging) in the evaluation of patients with newly diagnosed malignancies in comparison with positron emission tomography- computed tomogra

Purpose: To evaluate the effectiveness of WB-MRI for the detection of primary and metastatic lesions in comparison to PET-CT in patients with newly diagnosed malignancies Material and Methods: In this prospective study, 36 patients were evaluated between August 2008 and October 2012. The findings of WB-MRI (DWI and fat saturated T2 weighted images) were compared to the findings of PET-CT regarding the primary lesions and metastasis. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were calculated. To assess the aggreement between PET-CT and WB-MRI, kappa analysis was performed. Results: The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values for WB-DWI for the detection of primary and metastatic lesions in comparison to PET-CT were 96%, 89%, 97% and 84%, respectively.These are calculated as 96%, 56% , 90% and 77%, for fat-saturated T2W images. According to kappa analysis, the agreement between PET-CT and WB-DWI was excellent (κ = 0.83), but between PET-CT and fat-saturated T2 weighted images, it was moderate (κ = 0.58). Conclusion: Providing both morphogical and functional data, WB-MRI with DWI is emerging as a promising alternative imaging tool in the evaluation of cancer patients and may become complementary to PET-CT in several clinical applications .