title: Comparison of whole-body MRI and skeletal scintigraphy for detection of bone metastatic tumors: a meta-analysis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We performed a meta-analysis to investigate and compare diagnostic performance of whole-body MRI and skeletal scintigraphy for detection of bone metastatic tumors.
  
  
  METHODS
  PubMed and Embase were searched for relevant articles. We calculated sensitivities, specificities, diagnostic odds ratios (DOR), positive likelihood ratios (PLR), negative likelihood ratios (NLR), and constructed summary receiver operating characteristic curves using bivariate models for whole-body MRI and skeletal scintigraphy, respectively.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Across 7 studies (332 patients), whole-body MRI have similar patient-based sensitivity (0.84 vs 0.83), specificity (0.96 vs 0.94), DOR (137.0 vs 70.2), PLR (23.3 vs 13.0) and NLR (0.17 vs 0.19) with skeletal scintigraphy. Area under curves for whole-body MRI and skeletal scintigraphy was 0.94 and 0.89, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Both whole-body MRI and skeletal scintigraphy have good diagnostic performance for detecting bone metastatic tumors. It remains inconclusive whether whole-body MRI or bone scintigraphy is superior in detecting bone metastatic tumors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Imaging, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University, Weihui 453100, PR China.
authors.forename: Qingwu
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Ruimin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Fengmei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
mesh_terms: D001859:Bone Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000556:secondary; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D016017:Odds Ratio; D011379:Prognosis; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
keywords: Bone metastases; Malignant tumors; Skeletal scintigraphy; Whole-body MRI