( Whole-body MRI with an automatic moving...)Whole-body MRI Takes Less Than 20 Min To Scan A Patient's Entire Body For Cancer Spread To Bone

For one study, researchers from the Clinica Girona in Catalonia, Spain, performed whole-body MRI on 42 patients with known malignant tumors and a suspicion of bone lesions. Upon analyzing the results, the researchers found that whole-body MRI had a sensitivity of 100%, a specificity of 95% and an accuracy of 97%. According to the researchers, these results were about 20% better than bone scintigraphy, which is usually performed for this purpose.

“Whole-body MRI is a relatively new technique that uses an automatic moving table and fast software. It offers a better sensitivity and higher specificity in detecting bone metastasis than other methods,?said Joan C. Vilanova, MD, lead researcher for the study.

In addition to all its benefits, say the researchers, whole-body MRI is not just limited to finding metastasis in the bone. “Besides its accuracy, quickness and the fact that it’s an MRI scan—which means it’s noninvasive and there is no radiation risk to the patient—whole-body MRI can also detect metastases in other parts of the body besides the bones, such as in the brain, lung or liver,?said Dr. Vilanova.

Dr. Vilanova will present the full results of the study on May 16 during the American Roentgen Ray Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA.

In a separate study that compared the results of whole-body MRI and whole-body FDG-PET for detecting cancer, researchers from the University Hospital in Freiburg, Germany, also found that whole-body MRI is fast and accurate for discovering bone metastases. However, they discovered that whole-body FDG-PET is superior to whole-body MRI in for staging lymph nodes, soft-tissue tumors and
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Source:American Roentgen Ray Society