The predominant role of 18F-FDG PET/CT over MDCT in assessment of ovarian cancer patients

ObjectivesThis article discusses that FDG PET/CT is superior to MDCT in evaluation of ovarian cancer oncological evaluation.Patients and methods87 PET/CT scans of 64 women with clinically suspected or pathologically proven ovarian cancer were retrospectively analyzed. The findings of contrast enhanced MDCT (CE-CT) were interpreted by two experienced radiologists unaware of PET/CT findings. At least two experienced nuclear medicine physicians who were unaware of CE-MDCT findings examined PET images, evaluating localization and characterization and comparing them to co-registered PET/CT images. Diagnostic accuracy was determined on a patient level and a region level.ResultsPET has significantly higher Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, and overall accuracy of 94.7%, 86.7%, 93.1%, 89.7%, and 91.9% respectively compared to 89.5%, 30%, 70.8%, 60% and 68.9% for MDCT on patient level. The diagnostic performance of PET was also better at most anatomical sites when results were analyzed on region level.Conclusions and recommendationsFDG PET in addition to conventional imaging modalities should represent an important step in the diagnostic flowchart of ovarian cancer patients for evaluating abdominal and extra-abdominal probable metastatic deposits.