Lymph Node Assessment Using Simultaneous 18F-FDG-PET and MRI

Patients (n = 30) with head and neck cancer who are scheduled for node dissection surgery are eligible. Enrolled subjects will undergo one research PET/MR scan at the Center for Biomedical Imaging (660 First Avenue) within one week prior to the planned surgery. During the dissection, the locations of removed lymph nodes will be noted in terms of conventional neck lymph node levels. PET/MR data will be used for development of a combined kinetic model analysis of PET and MRI data (Aim 1). The final PET/MR findings will be compared with pathological evaluation results in order to assess the accuracy of PET/MR for detection of nodal metastases (Aim 2).