Diagnostic Value of Multimodal Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Discriminating Between Metastatic and Non-Metastatic Pelvic Lymph Nodes in Cervical Cancer

BACKGROUND: The status of pelvic lymph node (PLN) metastasis affects treatment and prognosis plans in patients with cervical cancer. However, it is hard to be diagnosed in clinical practice. PURPOSE: The present study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic value of multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in discriminating between metastatic and non-metastatic pelvic lymph nodes (PLNs) in cervical cancer. METHODS: This retrospective study analyzed MRIs of 209 PLNs in 25 women with pathologically proven cervical cancer. All PLNs had been assessed by pre-treatment multimodal MRIs, and their status was finally confirmed by histopathology. In conventional MRI, lymph node characteristics were compared between metastatic and non-metastatic PLNs. Signal intensity, time–intensity curve (TIC) patterns minimal and mean apparent diffusion coefficients (ADC) were compared between them in DWI. In DCE-MRI, quantitative (K(trans), K(ep) and V(e)) analyses were performed on DCE-MRI sequences, and their predictive values were analyzed by ROC curves. RESULTS: Of 209 PLNs, 22 (10.53%) were metastases and 187 (89.47%) were non-metastases at histopathologic examination. Considering a comparison of lymph node characteristics, the short axis size, the long axis size, and the boundary differed significantly between the two groups (P<0.05).The differences in ADC(min), TIC types, K(trans) and V(e) between metastatic and non-metastatic PLNs were significant as well (P<0.05). The good diagnostic performance of multimodal MRI was shown in discriminating between metastatic and non-metastatic PLNs, with the sensitivity of 85.0% (17/20), specificity of 97.3% (184/189), and accuracy of 96.2% (201/209). ROC analyses showed that the diagnostic accuracy of ADC(min), K(trans) and V(e) for discriminating between metastatic and non-metastatic PLNs in cervical cancer was 83.7%, 91.4%, and 92.4% with the cut-off values of 0.72 × 10(−3)mm(2)/s, 0.52 min(−1), and 0.53 min(−1), respectively. CONCLUSION: Multimodal MRI showed good diagnostic performance in determining PLN status in cervical cancer.