Early invasive cervical cancer imaging better with MRI than CT

November 7, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - MRI is better than CT for preoperative evaluation of early invasive cervical cancer, but both modalities are less than perfect, according to a report in the November issue of Radiology.

Dr. Hedvig Hricak from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York and colleagues compared diagnostic performance and interobserver variability for CT and MRI in the pretreatment evaluation of early invasive cervical cancer, using surgical pathologic findings as the reference standard.

Interobserver variability was generally lower for MRI than for CT, the authors report, though reader agreement in tumor visualization, detection of parametrial invasion, and staging was relatively low for both modalities.

MRI was significantly better than CT for tumor visualization and for detection of parametrial invasion, the report indicates.

For both modalities, sensitivity was low and specificity was high in identifying advanced stage cervical cancer. Positive predictive values were low for MRI (0.36) and CT (0.55), and negative predictive values were similar for CT (0.83) and MRI (0.85).

"These findings suggest that MR imaging and CT are inherently imperfect for the evaluation of cervical cancer and that further technologic advances are required to improve the imaging assessment of cervical cancer," the researchers conclude.