Cancer Imaging Study Group

Ovarian cancer imaging

Ovarian cancer is the sixth most common cancer among women in developed countries and the most lethal of the gynaecological malignancies. Currently, most women have advanced-stage disease at the time of diagnosis. Imaging of the pelvis alone is not sufficient to assess patients with ovarian cancer because the disease burden is typically spread around the abdominal cavity. Recent advances have enabled MRI with diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and dynamic contrast enhanced sequences to be widely applied to tumor evaluation in the abdomen and pelvis. Technical improvements in scanners and sequences now enable acceptable DW image quality in abdominal areas.

The aim of the ovarian cancer study is to evaluate the incremental value of abdominal 3 T MRI and assessment of apparent diffusion coefficient values as an adjunct to abdominal contrast enhanced CT in the staging and predicting treatment response in newly diagnosed and recurrent ovarian cancer.