Authors: Yuji Nakamoto Ken Tamai Tsuneo Saga Tatsuya Higashi Tadashi Hara Tsuyoshi Suga Takashi Koyama Kaori Togashi
Publish Date: 2008/09/04
Volume: 11, Issue: 1, Pages: 46-
Abstract
Sixtyfive consecutive patients underwent MR and FDGPET scans before or after the treatment of known or suspected head and neck cancer T1weighted and T2weighted images were first assessed by MR interpretation and then the fused images of T2weighted images from MR and PET were evaluated in a blind manner Diagnostic performance was comparedFor initial staging in 48 patients malignant tumors were histologically confirmed in 45 patients The interpretation sensitivities of MR alone and fused images for primary tumors were 98 and 100 respectively For lymph node metastasis the sensitivity and specificity of both methods were 85 and 92 respectively Of 15 patients with suspected recurrence ten patients had recurrent tumors three patients developed second malignant tumors and two patients had no recurrence For these patients the overall sensitivity of MR alone was 67 whereas that of the fused images was 92 Eight additional lesions were accurately diagnosed by image fusion only In two patients with lymph node metastasis from unknown origin the primary site was not detected in one patient while tonsilar cancer was identified only by image fusion interpretation
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