The value of Synthetic MRI combined with histogram analysis in predicting treatment response to chemoradiotherapy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Almost 80% nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients are diagnosed with locoregionally-advanced stage at the time of initial diagnosis. Early detection of treatment response is important for adjusting therapy regimens. SyMRI could not only generate multi-contrast images (including T1WI, T2WI and PDWI) in a single scan, but also generate quantitative T1, T2 and PD maps. Our study demonstrated that SyMRI combined with histogram analysis could non-invasive predict early treatment response. The predict performance of combined SyMRI and clinical factors was significantly higher than clinical only or TNM stage only.