How effective is whole-body MRI as an imaging technique for measuring treatment responses in patients with blood cancers?

This study assessed the accuracy of whole-body (WB) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in evaluating the treatment response of blood cancers. The data indicated that WB-MRI had a high diagnostic performance for assessing the treatment response of blood cancers and its addition was strongly linked to better diagnostic sensitivity.

Accurate assessment of cancer treatment responses is important in guiding treatment strategies for patients with blood cancers such as lymphoma or multiple myeloma (MM). The use of imaging techniques for assessing treatment responses is crucial for non-surgical treatments of blood cancers.

Fluorine-18-Fluorodeoxyglucose (F-FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET) or computed tomography (CT) are types of medical imaging used to estimate changes in tumor sizes and tissue metabolism. Recently, the use of WB-MRI has increased for screening and staging cancer. It offers the advantage of zero radiation exposure, unlike F-FDG PET/CT. Also, WB-MRI has shown promise for assessing cancer therapeutic responses. WB-MRI can be combined with WB diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to obtain valuable information to characterize tumors, which would not be possible with F-FDG PET/CT.

However, whether WB-MRI is of higher diagnostic value than F-FDG PET/CT in diagnosing therapeutic responses of blood cancers is still unclear.

This analysis included 14 studies with 457 patients. most patients had been diagnosed with lymphoma and MM. 10 studies focused on adults while 3 studies included children or young adults. The diagnostic performance of WB-MRI was evaluated using pooled results.

WB-MRI had a sensitivity of 88% and a specificity of 86%. This means that WB-MRI was able to correctly identify a good response in 88% of cases (sensitivity). It could also correctly identify the cases without a good treatment response in 86% of cases.

When WB-MRI was used together with WB-DWI it had a sensitivity of 94% compared to 55% without WB-DWI. The diagnostic performance of WB-MRI was similar to F-FDG-PET/CT based on sensitivity and specificity.

The analysis showed that WB-MRI had good sensitivity and specificity for assessing treatment responses in patients with lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

This analysis included articles with different patient samples that could potentially impact the results of the study.