ABSTRACT
The determination of lymph node involvement (nodal staging) is mandatory when investigating patients with malignancy (1-3). Standard cross-sectional imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apply unreliable indices such as nodal size and other morphological criteria to distinguish benign from malignant lymph nodes (4-6). This is principally because normalsized nodes may contain microscopic metastatic disease and enlarged nodes can be reactive in nature; furthermore, it has been repeatedly shown that signal intensity on MR images as well as the presence of gadolinium enhancement is unreliable when trying to distinguish normal nodes from cancerous nodes (7,8).
