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The purpose of this study was to determine whether reformatted laryngeal images derived from a standard neck CT acquisition can replace a separate dedicated high-resolution laryngeal acquisition. In 200 patients, the authors found a discrepancy in nearly one-quarter of the interpretations. Both up-staging and down-staging errors were made with the standard neck CT protocol and were critical in defining the optimal therapeutic approach. The authors concluded that the addition of focused images of the larynx after a second contrast bolus and a second acquisition sequence improves the radiologic staging of laryngeal tumors.

Routine MRI techniques are rather limited in assessing treatment response versus disease progression following radiation therapy as lesion size often fluctuates after both successful and unsuccessful treatment. In this study, dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI perfusion parameters were used to predict treatment success or failure regarding spinal osseous metastases and to show the concordance with lesion-size measurements in the determination of treatment success or failure. The authors found there were significant differences in the change in plasma volume following radiation treatment between their clinical response and persistent disease groups. Additionally, they demonstrated that plasma volume had a higher specificity than size measurements.