PET/MRI can diagnose the cause of foot pain better than other imaging modalities, with the added benefit of less radiation exposure for patients.
That conclusion comes from a new German study published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (March 2015, Vol. 56:3, pp. 430-435).
The researchers compared the quality and diagnostic performance of fluoride-PET/MRI with fluoride-PET/CT in 22 patients whose specific diagnoses were inconclusive after clinical examination and radiography. PET/MRI's overall image quality was significantly superior to that of PET/CT, with a score of 3 out of 3 points in all PET/MRI datasets, while PET/CT achieved 2.3 out of 3 points.
Fluoride-PET/MRI provided more diagnostic information at a higher diagnostic certainty than fluoride-PET/CT in patients with foot pain of unclear cause, concluded lead author Dr. Isabel Rauscher, from Munich Technical University, and colleagues.
The hybrid modality also provided "additional diagnostic relevant findings from soft-tissue and bone marrow pathology," such as bone marrow edema, ganglion cysts, or tenosynovitis, compared with PET/CT, she noted in a statement.
MRI also benefited patients by exposing them to no radiation, allowing for longer PET acquisition time and less radiation than with a PET/CT scan.
