PET/MRI biomarkers guide personalized treatment for people with PC

PET/MRI biomarkers guide personalized treatment for people with pancreatic cancer, study finds - Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center Blog
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https://cancerblog.mayoclinic.org/2022/01/13/pet-mri-biomarkers-guide-personalized-treatment-for-people-with-pancreatic-cancer-study-finds/
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Some items of note:

Positron emission tomography (PET)/MRI has changed how Mayo Clinic specialists treat patients with pancreatic cancer.

A PET scan can often detect the abnormal metabolism of the tracer in diseases before the disease shows up on other imaging tests, such as computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

In less than five years, Mayo's PET/MRI practice has grown from a brand-new technology with unknown promise to the most important imaging available to treat pancreatic cancer.

Mayo added its first PET/MRI scanner in 2015 in Rochester, with additional scanners added in Arizona in 2016 and Florida in 2017.

Pancreatic cancer imaging has been one of the primary drivers behind significant growth in PET/MRI.

"It has revolutionized what we do," says Mark Truty, M.D., a hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgeon at Mayo Clinic.

"We can see the tumor die on the PET/MRI scan images," Dr. Truty says. "From the patient perspective, if you're going to get chemotherapy that has side effects, you better be sure it's doing what we think it's doing. And that's what the PET scan allows us to determine much better than a regular CT scan."

The study team determined that PET/MRI provides a noninvasive selection tool to decide whether a surgery will benefit the patient in the long run, and whether a timely switch to alternate treatment regimens could optimize a patient's chances for favorable long-term outcomes.

"We've probably done over 1,000 PET/MRIs. In this particular study, we found that the PET/MRI was much better in predicting how cancer would respond than regular CT scans or blood tests that we normally would use. And that's how this is really changing the practice," Dr. Truty says. "The first thing I want to see after my first visit with the patient after they get their first rounds of chemotherapy is what is the PET/MRI telling me? And then we make significant treatment decisions based on that PET scan."