• Vivien Thomson, Jean-Baptiste Pialat, Frédéric Gay, Agnès Coulon, Alain Voloch, Anne Granier, Jean-Claude Guérin, Magalie Viallon, and Yves Berthezene.
• Service de Radiologie, Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse, Lyon, France. vivien.thomson@chu-lyon.fr
• Am. J. Clin. Oncol. 2008 Jun 1; 31 (3): 285-92.

ObjectivesTo evaluate 3D Volumetric Interpolated Breath-hold Examination (VIBE) whole-body MRI (WB-MRI) acquisition for the metastases staging.MethodsThirty-two consecutive patients with solid tumor were examined from head to feet before and after contrast injection. An automatic subtraction occurred between the 2 series of images. WB-MRI was compared with conventional staging techniques (CT, scintigraphy, brain MRI, and whole-body PET in 4 cases).ResultsWB-MRI and the reference techniques depicted metastases in 25 patients. WB-MRI depicted more bone lesions in the spine, pelvis, skull, femur, and tibia, whereas scintigraphy detected more rib lesions. WB-MRI depicted 27 cerebral metastases, whereas brain MRI depicted 40 cerebral metastases. WB-MRI depicted a total of 8 hepatic metastases, 8 adrenal lesions, and conventional staging 7 hepatic metastases and 10 adrenal lesions. WB-MRI examination depicted lung metastases in 10 patients, and CT examination in 13 patients.ConclusionThe results of this study indicate that WB-MRI is a feasible and promising technique for tumor staging.

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