SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Nuclear Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1602415
Comparing the Diagnostic Efficacy of [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT and [ 18 F]FDG PET/MRI in Breast Cancer Recurrence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Radiology, Yunnan Cancer Hospital, Kunming, China
- 2Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
- 3The 920th Hospital of Joint Logistics Support Force, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
- 4Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China
- 5Department of Gynecology, Yunnan Cancer Hospital, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
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Purpose: This meta-analysis evaluates and compares the diagnostic accuracy of [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT and [ 18 F]FDG PET/MRI in detecting breast cancer recurrence. Methods: A search was conducted across PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases up to June 10, 2025, to identify studies evaluating the diagnostic performance of [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT and/or [ 18 F]FDG PET/MRI in breast cancer recurrence. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated using the DerSimonian and Laird method with Freeman-Tukey double arcsine transformation. The Quality Assessment for Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy-2 (QUADAS-2) guidelines were employed to perform the quality evaluation.Results: 17 studies involving 1,450 patients were included. At the lesion level, the sensitivity of [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT was 0.97 (95% CI: 0.91-1.00), with a specificity of 0.79 (95% CI: 0.58-0.94). [ 18 F]FDG PET/MRI showed a sensitivity of 0.95 (95% CI: 0.91-0.99) and specificity of 0.87 (95% CI:0.75-0.95). Both modalities demonstrated similar sensitivity (P = 0.71) and specificity (P = 0.66). At the patient level, the sensitivity of [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT was 0.93 (95% CI: 0.88-0.96), with a specificity of 0.87 (95% CI: 0.80-0.93). [ 18 F]FDG PET/MRI showed a sensitivity of 0.99 (95% CI: 0.94-1.00) and specificity of 0.98 (95% CI: 0.90-1.00). Both modalities demonstrated similar sensitivity (P = 0.07) and specificity (P = 0.06).Conclusions: [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT and [ 18 F]FDG PET/MRI exhibit comparable sensitivity and specificity in detecting breast cancer recurrence at both the lesion and patient levels. However, high heterogeneity warrants further head-to-head studies to strengthen the evidence and provide more comprehensive insights.
Keywords: breast cancer, [ 18 F]FDG PET/CT, [ 18 F]FDG PET/MRI, Recurrence, Meta-analysis
Received: 29 Mar 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Xie, Ding, Ma, Li, Zhang, Zhang and Ai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Conghui Ai, Department of Radiology, Yunnan Cancer Hospital, Kunming, China
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