Comparison of FDG whole-body PET/CT and gadolinium-enhanced whole-body MRI for distant malignancies in patients with malignant tumors: a meta-analysis.

Background: We performed a meta-analysis to compare the performance of whole-body positron emission tomography/computed tomography (WB-PET/CT) with that of whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (WB-MRI) for the overall assessment of distant malignancies in patients with malignant tumors.

Methods: We performed a meta-analysis of 13 available articles (1239 patients). We calculated sensitivities, specificities, positive likelihood ratios, and negative likelihood ratios, and constructed summary receiver operating characteristic curves using bivariate regression models for WB-PET/CT and WB-MRI, respectively.

Results: Across nine studies (1070 patients), WB-PET/CT have similar patient-based sensitivity (0.85 versus 0.85) and specificity (0.96 versus 0.97) with WB-MRI. Across 5 studies (210 patients), WB-PET/CT have similar lesion-based sensitivity (0.85 vs 0.88) and specificity (0.90 vs 0.89) with WB-MRI. Across four studies (511 patients), the combined use may have higher patient-based sensitivity (0.89) than WB-PET/CT (0.82) and WB-MRI (0.81) alone.

Conclusions: Both WB-PET/CT and WB-MRI have good diagnostic performance for the overall assessment of distant malignancies in patients with malignant tumors. The combined use may provide more added value than WB-PET/CT and WB-MRI alone.