It allows the detection of most cancers at a primordial stage, including many of those for which until now there was no possibility of screening, without radiation and the need for contrast fluid even in healthy people: it is the Whole Body Diffusion magnetic resonance ( DWB), of which the leading international experts in diagnostic imaging, coordinated by the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, have published, in the journal Radiology, the first guidelines for its use in the early diagnosis of tumors.
The DWB is able to create a single image of the whole body without using radiation or contrast media, obtaining ultra-sensitive images at the molecular level.
It was initially used for patients with tumors at high risk of developing hidden and asymptomatic metastases. Given its ability to visualize lesions of a few millimeters often not detectable with other techniques, it was thought to also apply it to screening for healthy people. "The clinical results obtained with patients, the absence of radiation and contrast medium and the absolute safety of the examination led us to propose this type of resonance to healthy people - explains Giuseppe Petralia, first author of the study - to obtain a screening of the whole body, to identify in time even tumors such as those of the pancreas, kidney, bone system or lymphomas that today are beyond prevention ".
Currently the technique is used in the main European and American cancer hospitals for cancer patients, but only at the Ieo is it applied in large volumes also for the early diagnosis of tumors, as well as on cancer patients already under treatment, when conventional investigations have not been conclusive and in all pregnant patients. "With Whole Body Diffusion magnetic resonance and the guidelines - comments Roberto Orecchia, scientific director of the Ieo - we have an additional instrument of precision medicine". (HANDLE).
