Pretreatment [18F]FDG PET/CT and MRI in the prognosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Objective The present study aimed to assess the prognostic interest of metabolic and anatomic parameters derived from 2-deoxy-2-[ 18 F]fluoro- d -glucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography ([ 18 F]FDG PET/CT) and head and neck magnetic resonance imaging (HN-MRI) for better management of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Methods In this study, pre-treatment [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT and HN-MRI parameters of NPC patients diagnosed between January 2017 and December 2018, were prospectively investigated. Correlation between those parameters and 4-year patient’s survival outcomes was evaluated using Kaplan–Meier and Cox-regression analyses. Results Our results revealed a significant association between pre-treatment nodal-maximum standardized uptake value (N-SUV max) and N categories ( p = 0.01), between pre-treatment node-to-tumor SUV ratio (NTR) and both tumor size ( p = 0.01) and N categories ( p = 0.009), as well as between metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and both tumor size and NPC overall stage ( p