Nina A. Mayr1, William T.C. Yuh2, Hualin Zhang1, Lanchun Lu1, Joe F. Montebello1, Steffen Sammet2, Guang Jia2, Jeffrey M. Fowler3, Kyle Porter4, David Jarjoura4, Jian Z. Wang1
1Radiation, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; 2Radiology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; 3Obstetrics & Gynecology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; 4Biostatistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Despite favorable prognosis, many low risk cervical cancer patients ultimately fail therapy. The purpose of this study was to assess, if DCE MRI can predict poor treatment outcome in patients with otherwise favorable clinical prognosis judged by gold-standard clinical criteria. DCE MRI predicts treatment failure early in otherwise favorable-prognosis cervical cancer patients and provides a therapeutic window to modify the treatment strategies that can have profound impact to the long term outcome. This predictive ability is likely related to DCE MRIs ability to indentify and analyze the subregions of the heterogeneous tumor that likely represent tumor cells resistant to treatment.