Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Lower Vertebral Column in Patients with Multiple Myeloma

Extent of disease burden determined with magnetic resonance imaging of the bone marrow is predictive of survival outcome in patients with multiple myeloma

“…15,16 In this context, the primary use of MRI to date has been to assess bone disease, extraosseous metastases, or paraspinal tumors to look for cord impingement. [16][17][18] Despite its increased use, to our knowledge there is no defined system to incorporate bone marrow imaging for routine patient evaluation and staging. The imaging techniques are not only subjective but also have not been validated uniformly with other established clinical or laboratory markers of disease.…”

“…Infiltration of the bone marrow by myeloma has been described previously as broad categories of focal, patchy/variegated, or diffuse infiltration. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] The current study describes a semiquantitative way to assess bone marrow infiltration by MRI that may be more reproducible.…”

Comparison of whole-body MR imaging and conventional X-ray examination in patients with multiple myeloma and implications for therapy

“…In the past few years, wb-MRI has become an established tool in the diagnostic workup for lymphomas, bone metastasis, and also multiple myeloma [2,6,7,14,18,20,21]. With wb-MRI, the pathomorphological features of the bone marrow such as increased cellular density, neovascularization, and a decreased fat signal in the spongious structures due to the myeloma infiltration could be detected to give a direct and exact assessment of the bone marrow [13,22].…”

Imaging of Multiple Myeloma and Related Plasma Cell Dyscrasias

“…Focal lesions gradually fill in with scar tissue with low water content, matching the MRI signal of normal central marrow if the patient remains in remission. The normalization of MRI focal lesions can take weeks to years, depending on the size of the focal bone lesion (56)(57)(58)(59)(60)(61)(62)(63)(64)(65). Knowledge of the normal appearance of the central marrow for the patient's age is a prerequisite for proper interpretation of the MR image.…”