PET/CT and Whole-Body MRI for Detection of Skeletal and Soft Tissue Metastases

Trial Information

PET/CT and Whole-Body MRI for Detection of Skeletal and Soft Tissue Metastases

Fluorine-18 Fluorodeoxyglucose (F-18 FDG) PET/CT is established as a powerful imaging tool
for cancer detection and monitoring response to therapy. However, not all cancers are
identified reliably due to variable rates of glucose metabolism. Whole-body MRI emerges
currently as an excellent modality for morphological characterization of soft tissue and
skeletal lesions. Sodium Fluorine-18 (F-18) was used in the 1970's for bone scanning and can
be used as a skeletal tracer in current PET/CT scanners. The direct comparison of F-18/F-18
FDG PET/CT and whole-body MRI for skeletal metastases detection was not attempted to date.
However, such an approach has the potential to improve cancer diagnosis, staging, prognosis,
and therapy monitoring. The combination of these technologies may also allow for improved
screening or earlier cancer detection. We will attempt a pilot study with 10 patients to
acquire the preliminary results needed to proceed with additional 90 subjects.

The primary objectives include:

Testing the hypothesis that the adjunctive combination of the F-18/F-18 FDG PET/CT and
whole-body MRI provides diagnostic accuracy that is significantly better than Tc-99m bone
scanning

The secondary objectives include:

- Evaluating F-18 PET/CT as a reliable bone scanning method;

- Evaluating skeletal whole-body MRI image repeatability; and

- Evaluating imaging protocols' performance and reliability.