Stephanie B. Donaldson1,2, James P.B. O'Connor2, Catharine M.L. West3, Bernadette M. Carrington4, Susan E. Davidson5, Andrew P. Jones1, David L. Buckley2
1North Western Medical Physics, Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK; 2Imaging Science and Biomedical Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; 3Academic Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; 4Department of Radiology, Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK; 5Department of Clinical Oncology, Christie Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK
Patient survival in cervical cancer varies considerably. There is a need to predict which patients are unlikely to respond to therapy. DCE-MRI studies were performed in 46 patients pre-external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) and in 10 patients post-EBRT. The enhancing fraction of each tumour (EF = enhancing voxels / total tumour voxels) was calculated at 25, 50, 75 and 100s post-contrast. Patients with low EF had significantly better recurrence-free survival than those with high EF and EF increased post-EBRT. High EF may indicate more aggressive / angiogenic tumours and is a simple radiological biomarker of prognosis in patients with cervix tumours.