Background: Current intraoperative methods of visual inspection and tissue palpation by the surgeon, and frozen section analysis cannot reliably prevent inadequate surgical margins in patients treated for oral squamous-cell carcinoma (OSCC). This study assessed feasibility of MRI for the assessment of surgical resection margins in fresh OSCC specimens.
Methods: Ten consecutive tongue specimens containing OSCC were scanned using 3 T clinical whole-body MRI. Two radiologists independently annotated OSCC location and minimal tumor-free margins. Whole-mount histology was the reference standard.
Results: The positive predictive values (PPV) and negative predictive values (NPV) for OSCC localization were 96% and 75%, and 87% and 79% for reader 1 and 2, respectively. The PPV and NPV for identification of margins <5 mm were 38% and 91%, and 5% and 87% for reader 1 and 2, respectively.
Conclusions: MRI accurately localized OSCC with high inter-reader agreement in fresh OSCC specimens, but it seemed not yet feasible to accurately assess the surgical margin status.
Keywords: MRI; margins of excision; squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck; tongue neoplasms; whole mount histology.
© 2020 The Authors. Head & Neck published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.