When patients are diagnosed with cervical cancer at the locally advanced stage, the standard care is concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). But what if that isn’t the right choice?
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Ineffective treatment is associated with increased toxicity, accelerated tumor growth, and a delay in starting any alternative potentially effective treatment, according to researchers from Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital in China. These researchers suggest a role for intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is an extension of diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI).
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To date MRI has been established as the most effective imaging method in cervical cancer. However, DWI has shown potential as an early predictor based on morphologic, physiologic, and metabolic information. In turn, IVIM imaging, which assesses microscopic changes in diffusion and perfusion, has been used to provide clues to cancers in the head and neck, prostate, breast, and kidney—but not cervical cancer.
In their study, the researchers enrolled 21 patients about to undergo CCRT for advanced cervical cancer. These patients received MR examinations, including IVIM imaging, 1 week before CCRT, 2 and 4 weeks during CCRT, and after 1 week post-CCRT to address the use of IVIM imaging in cervical cancer.
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The IVIM MR imaging showed “dynamic changes” of cervical cancers during treatment, making IVIM parameters possible biomarkers for tumor response following CCRT for cervical cancer. With technological advances the researchers say, IVIM could become “a valuable imaging tool,” in the clinic as well as in cancer research.
Source:
Zhu L, Zhu L, Shi H, et al. BMC Cancer. 2016;16:79
doi 10.1186/s12885-016-2116-5
