Abstract
1595
Objectives The aim of the study is to compare the 18-F Fluorocholine PET/CT (FCH PET/CT) with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in identifying local, nodal and metastatic disease in clinically positive prostate carcinoma patients.
Methods Between April 2010 and July 2011, FCH PET/CT study was done for 45 patients for Ca prostate. Among them, 42 patients were considered clinically positive patients when they had raising trend of PSA or histologically proven malignancy or both. Among the clinically positive patients, 17 patients were selected who also underwent MRI scan within short interval (within one month before or after FCH PET/CT). The FCH PET/CT and MRI scans were reviewed and findings were divided into three categories, (1) local disease: prostatic and extracapsular involvement, (2) nodal disease: pelvic and paraaortic lymph nodes involvement, (3) distal metastases: bones and lungs. FCH PET/CT and MRI scan results were compared and analysed for correlation.
Results In the selected group of 17 patients who underwent both FCH PET/CT and MRI pelvis, all patients had FCH PET/CT positive findings and only 12 patients had MRI positive findings. MRI scan was negative in 4 patients and equivocal in one patient. Comparing the FCH/PET and MRI, MRI had missed 3 local diseases and 2 nodal diseases that were diagnosed in FCH PET/CT, in contrast FCH PET/CT had missed 1 metastatic disease of bone that was diagnosed in MRI.
Conclusions Our study demonstrated that overall the FCH PET/CT is more sensitive than MRI and FCH PET/CT can be used as an imaging tool for better disease localization. Even though FCH PET/CT detects more local and nodal disease in comparison to MRI, the MRI appears to have more value in diagnosing bone involvement due to its inherent sensitivity to image bone marrow. However the small number of our study group limits the confidence level, which may warrant a future study with larger number of patients for determining our future diagnostic protocol.