PET/CT and MRI in Evaluating Cervical Cancer

Abstract

 Positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging are two most important imaging tools for evaluating cervical cancer in clinic. They have improved the accuracy of tumor staging and prognosis predicting in a large part. PET/CT is superior for lymph node (LN) status and metastasis to other imaging modalities. And it could differ among tumor types and grades according to maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax). MRI is not sensitive to LN metastasis, but it shares the advantage of therapeutic response and recurrence evaluation with PET/CT. Recently, emerging functional imaging modality Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) has been showing its superiority on evaluation of cervical carcinoma as well. This article describes both advantages and limitations of MR imaging and PET/CT in evaluating cervical cancer, and reviews the current role of imaging techniques mentioned above.