Malignant pleural mesothelioma: initial experience in integrated 18F-FDG PET/MR imaging

PurposeThis study aims to compare staging results of 18F-FDG PET/computed tomography (CT) and integrated PET/magnetic resonance (MR) in malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) patients and to investigate a potential apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC)/SUV correlation.Materials and methodsSix patients with MPM underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT and PET/MR including diffusion-weighted imaging. Thoracic TNM staging was performed for both modalities. SUV and ADC were assessed in therapy-naive pleural lesions.ResultsIn thoracic TNM staging, no differences were found between PET/CT and PET/MR. An inverse correlation was observed between SUVmean and ADCmin (r =−0.63, P = .002).ConclusionMPM can be staged using PET/MR. The inverse correlation ADC/SUV indicates that future research on multiparametric therapy response evaluation may be warranted.