Whole Body 3.0 T Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Lymphomas: Comparison of Different Sequence Combinations for Staging Hodgkin's and Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphomas

To investigate the diagnostic value of different whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (WB-MRI) protocols for staging Hodgkin and diffuse-large B-cell lymphomas (HL and DLBCL), twenty-two patients (M/F 12/10, median age 32, range 22-87, HL/DLBCL 14/8) underwent baseline WB-MRI and F-2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) fused with computed tomography (CT) scan F-FDG-PET-CT. The 3.0 T WB-MRI was performed using pre-contrast modified Dixon (mDixon), T2-weighted turbo-spin-echo (TSE), diffusion-weighted-imaging (DWI), dynamic-contrast-enhanced (DCE) liver/spleen, contrast-enhanced (CE) lung MRI and CE whole-body mDixon. WB-MRI scans were divided into: (1) "WB-MRI ": whole-body DWI + in-phase mDixon (2) "WB-MRI ": whole-body T2-TSE (3) "WB-MRI ": whole-body CE mDixon + DCE liver/spleen and CE lung mDixon (4) "WB-MRI All ": the entire protocol. Two radiologists evaluated WB-MRIs at random, independently and then in consensus. Two nuclear-medicine-physicians reviewed F-FDG PET-CT in consensus. An enhanced-reference-standard (ERS) was derived using all available baseline and follow-up imaging. The sensitivity and specificity of WB-MRI protocols for nodal and extra-nodal staging was derived against the ERS. Agreement between the WB-MRI protocols and the ERS for overall staging was assessed using kappa statistic. For consensus WB-MRI, the sensitivity and specificity for nodal staging were 75%, 98% for WB-MRI , 76%, 98% for WB-MRI , 83%, 99% for WB-MRI and 87%, 100% for WB-MRI . The sensitivity and specificity for extra-nodal staging were 67% 100% for WB-MRI , 89%, 100% for WB-MRI , 89%, 100% for WB-MRI and 100%, 100% for the WB-MRI . The consensus WB-MRI read had perfect agreement with the ERS for overall staging [kappa = 1.00 (95% CI: 1.00-1.00)]. The best diagnostic performance is achieved combining all available WB-MRI sequences.