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Female pelvic bone marrow: serial MR imaging before, during, and after radiation therapy
V Blomlie1, E K Rofstad, A Skjønsberg
1Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Norwegian.
Purpose:
To study early changes in irradiated pelvic and adjacent nonirradiated bone marrow with T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) and short inversion time inversion-recovery (STIR) imaging.
Materials And Methods:
The bone marrow of 31 women with advanced cervical carcinoma was studied in 161 MR examinations before, during, and 7 weeks after radiation therapy. Two radiologists visually evaluated the marrow signal intensity (MSI) on T1-weighted and STIR images.
Results:
Changes in irradiated and adjacent nonirradiated marrow were shown on T1-weighted images in 31 (100%) and 18 (58%) of the 31 patients, respectively. MSI changes on images were observed as early as 8 days after the start of radiation therapy and occurred more frequently in irradiated than in adjacent nonirradiated marrow. In the irradiated regions, a complete fatty marrow was seen on T1-weighted images obtained 6-8 weeks after the start of radiation therapy in 28 (90%) of the 31 patients.
Conclusion:
T1-weighted and STIR images obtained during and soon after radiation therapy complement each other in showing changes in bone marrow.