Performance of 18F-FDG PET/MRI and its parameters in staging and neoadjuvant therapy response evaluation in bladder cancer

Summary: 18F-FDG PET/MRI shows potential efficacy in the diagnosis of bladder cancer (BLCA). However, the performance of 18F-FDG PET/MRI in staging and neoadjuvant therapy (NAT) response evaluation for BLCA patients remains elusive. Here, we conduct this study to evaluate the performance of 18F-FDG PET/MRI and its derived parameters for tumor staging and NAT response prediction in BLCA. Forty BLCA patients were retrospectively enrolled to evaluate the performance of 18F-FDG PET/MRI in staging and NAT response prediction in BLCA. The feasibility of using 18F-FDG PET/MRI-related parameters for tumor staging and NAT response evaluation was also analyzed. In conclusion, 18F-FDG PET/MRI is found to show good performance in the BLCA staging and NAT response prediction. Moreover, ΔSUVmean is an efficacious candidate parameter for NAT response prediction. This study highlights that 18F-FDG PET/MRI is a promising imaging approach in the clinical diagnosis and treatment for BLCA.