Whole body MRI may help to detect spread of cancers more quickly

Trials with people with newly-diagnosed colorectal and non-small cell lung cancer suggest that whole body Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) could reduce the time it takes to diagnose the stage of cancers.

The results are from two prospective trials with nearly 500 patients across 16 UK hospitals, published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology and The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journals.

Whole body MRI scans reduced the average time to determine the size of tumours and how much they had spread by five days for colorectal cancer patients and six days for lung cancer patients.

The treatments decided upon were similar, since results from MRI were as accurate as from standard investigations, but the costs per patient were reduced by nearly a quarter in the case of colorectal cancer and were almost halved for lung cancer.