Whole-body magnetic resonance imaging for staging of lung cancer.

Accurate staging of lung cancer is requisite to choose the optimal therapeutic strategy and is very important for prognosis. Multimodality diagnostic imaging is currently used for detection, staging, and follow-up. Whole-body FDG PET/CT provides 'anatometabolic' information and improves diagnostic accuracy especially for M-staging. MRI has unrivalled tissue contrast, provides very exact morphological information, and does not involve ionizing radiation compared to PET/CT. MRI is widely used for diagnosing and characterizing pathologies in all regions of the body. The use of multiple receiver channels and parallel imaging enables examination of the whole body with shorter acquisition time while high image quality is maintained. This article gives an overview of initial clinical results obtained with whole-body MRI in staging lung cancer.