Abstract #0046

Schmidt G, Schoenberg S, Schmid R, Stahl R, Herzog P, Reiser M, Baur-Melnyk A

Accurate detection of bone metastases in staging and restaging of patients with a neoplastic disease is vital to assess therapeutic options and patient prognosis. However, established diagnostic algorithms e.g. using 99mTc-phosphonate-based skeletal scintigraphy may miss early stage disease in absence of an osteoblastic response. Alternatively, whole-body MRI and PET-CT, were tested for their performance as diagnostic tools for bone screening in this study. Our results indicate that both whole-body MRI and PET-CT are robust modalities for the detection of malignant bone disease. However, overall diagnostic performance of MRI was higher than of PET-CT. With the use of PAT on a multi-channel whole-body MR scanner bone marrow screening of the entire body with high resolution and precise diagnostic accuracy is feasible below 40 minutes.