Prospective multimodal imaging assessment of locally advanced cervical cancer patients administered by chemoradiation followed by radical surgery—the 'PRICE' study 2: role of conventional and DW-MRI

To assess the diagnostic performance of conventional and DW-MRI parameters in the detection of residual tumor in locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) patients treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) and radical surgery Between October 2010 and June 2014, 88 patients with histologically documented cervical cancer (FIGO stage IB2–IVA) were prospectively included in the study. Maximum tumor diameters (maxTD), tumor volume (TV), DWI signal intensity (SI), and ADCmean were evaluated at MRI after nCRT. Histology was the reference standard. Treatment response was classified as complete (CR) or partial (PR). Comparisons were made with Mann-Whitney, χ2, and Fisher’s exact tests. ROC curves were generated for variables to evaluate diagnostic ability to predict PR and to determine the best cutoff value to predict PR. For each diagnostic test, sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were calculated. TV and maxTD were significantly smaller in the CR than in the PR group (p