Diagnostic Performance of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Pretreatment Evaluation of Invasive Cervical Carcinoma

This cross sectional study was carried out in the department of Radiology and Imaging, Dhaka Medical College Hospital in collaboration with Obstetrics and Gynecology department from July 2010 to June 2012 to compare the levels of diagnostic performance of MRI with FIGO clinical staging in the pretreatment evaluation of invasive carcinoma of the cervix using surgicohistopathological findings as reference standard. 30 patients with invasive carcinoma of uterine cervix were enrolled. Patients were examined by the gynecologic surgeon to determine the appropriate clinical FIGO stage. MRI examination was performed in all patients. In all cases, the findings of MRI, clinical examination and histopathological reports were recorded on a preformed data sheet. Finally, the accuracy of MRI findings and clinical FIGO staging were evaluated against the surgicohistopathological reports. For each modality, the estimated area under the ROC curve was reported. MRI (0.88) was significantly better than FIGO staging (0.68) for staging cervical tumor in Stage IA, as measured by the respective areas under the ROC curves (AUC). In case of Stage IIA, MRI (0.86) also proved to be significantly better than FIGO staging (0.74). These results revealed that MRI staging was more accurate than FIGO staging in diagnosis of invasive cervical carcinoma.