REVIEWS  PET AND GYNECOLOGICAL TUMORS 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2016 June;60(2):77-92

Copyright © 2016 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Molecular imaging in cervical cancer

Sairah R. KHAN ¹, Andrea G. ROCKALL ^{2, 3}, Tara D. BARWICK ^{1, 3} ✉

¹ Imaging Department, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, UK; ² Imaging Department, The Royal Marsden Hospital Foundation NHS Trust, London, UK; ³ Division of Cancer and Surgery, Imperial College, London, UK

Despite the development of screening and of a vaccine, cervix cancer is a major cause of cancer death in young women worldwide. A third of women treated for the disease will recur, almost inevitably leading to death. Functional imaging has the potential to stratify patients at higher risk of poor response or relapse by improved delineation of disease extent and tumor characteristics. A number of molecular imaging biomarkers have been shown to predict outcome at baseline and/or early during therapy in cervical cancer. In future this could help tailor the treatment plan which could include selection of patients for close follow up, adjuvant therapy or trial entry for novel agents or adaptive clinical trials. The use of molecular imaging techniques, FDG PET/CT and functional MRI, in staging and response assessment of cervical cancer is reviewed.