Gadolinium-based Contrast Agents Improve Detection of Recurrent Soft-Tissue Sarcoma at MRI

To determine the diagnostic efficacy of gadolinium-based contrast agents for the detection of recurrent soft-tissue sarcoma compared with non-contrast-enhanced conventional MRI sequences.

A retrospective study of patients with soft-tissue sarcomas who were imaged from January 2009 to December 2014 was performed. MRI studies from 69 patients (mean age, 61 years ± 15 [standard deviation], 45 men) with recurrent soft-tissue sarcoma and 63 age-, sex-, and tumor-matched controls with positive findings (nonrecurrence) were presented to six musculoskeletal radiologists at a tertiary cancer center in three image groupings. Group 1 consisted of precontrast T1-weighted and fat-suppressed T2-weighted images (no contrast agent). Group 2 consisted of precontrast and postcontrast fat-saturated T1-weighted images. Group 3 consisted of precontrast and fat-saturated postcontrast T1- and fat-suppressed T2-weighted images. Images within these three groups contained either recurrent soft-tissue sarcomas or positive postoperative findings (nonsarcoma). The presentation order of the first two image sets was reversed for half the readers. The readers were asked to classify presence of tumor on a five-point scale. The average score from the readers was used as consensus score for each case, and a case was considered positive if the average score was less than 3. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed using the average score for each image set.

Assessment of the group 3 image set resulted in higher sensitivity (74%, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 62%, 83%) than the group 2 image set (64%, 95% CI: 51%, 75%), which was also more sensitive than the assessment of the group 1 images set (49%, 95% CI: 37%, 61%), with P = .02 for both. There was no significant difference in specificity between the three groups. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) for the assessment of group 1 was 0.78 (95% CI: 0.70, 0.86), which was significantly lower than that of group 2, 0.92 (95% CI: 0.87, 0.96) and group 3, 0.93 (95% CI: 0.88, 0.97), with P values of .0006 and < .0001, respectively. There was no difference between the AUCs of groups 2 and 3 (P = .58).

Gadolinium-based contrast agents improved diagnostic performance in detection of recurrent soft-tissue sarcoma. Addition of fat-saturated T2-weighted images provided modest improvement in sensitivity.Keywords: Efficacy Studies, MR-Contrast Agent, Oncology, Soft Tissues/Skin© RSNA, 2020.