Thoracic staging of non-small-cell lung cancer using integrated (18)F-FDG PET/MR imaging: diagnostic value of different MR sequences

To compare the accuracy of different MR sequences in simultaneous PET/MR imaging for T staging in non-small-cell lung cancer in relation to histopathology. The study included 28 patients who underwent dedicated thoracic PET/MR imaging before tumour resection. Local tumour staging was performed separately by three readers with each of the following MR sequences together with PET: transverse T2 BLADE, transverse non-enhanced and contrast-enhanced T1 FLASH, T1 3D Dixon VIBE in transverse and coronal orientation, coronal T2 HASTE, and coronal TrueFISP. The staging results were compared with histopathology after resection as the reference standard. Differences in the accuracy of T staging among the MR sequences were evaluated using McNemar's test. Due to multiple testing, Bonferroni correction was applied to prevent accumulation of α errors; p