Lymph node imaging: basic principles.
Lymph nodes are involved in a wide variety of diseases, particularly in cancer. In the latter, precise nodal staging is essential to guide therapeutic options and to determine prognosis. For long, imaging of the lymphatic system has been limited to lymph vessel,especially via the exclusive use of conventional lymphography, at the expense of invasive procedures and patient's discomfort. Three main technical advances, however, have recently completed the clinical armamentarium for lymph node imaging: first, the refinement of cross sectional imaging, i.e. CT and MRI, combined or not with dedicated contrast agents, has progressively replaced conventional lymphography in oncology situations; second, the development of intra-operative sentinel node mapping has profoundly modified the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in several cancer situations, mostly melanoma and breast cancer; finally, the increased availability of functional imaging, especially through the use of FDG-PET, has greatly contributed to the accuracy improvement of nodal metastases identification. The aim of this review will thus be to briefly review the anatomy and physiology of the lymphatic systems and to overview the basic principles of up-to-date lymph node imaging.
Service d'Imagerie Médicale, Hôpital Henri Mondor, 51 avenue du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 94010 Créteil cedex, France. alain.luciani@hmn.ap-hop-paris.fr
Alain
A
Luciani
Emmanuel
E
Itti
Alain
A
Rahmouni
Michel
M
Meignan
Olivier
O
Clement
D003287:Contrast Media / Q000008:administration & dosage; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D008198:Lymph Nodes / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*
D003287:Contrast Media; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18