Widening access to whole body MRI for early diagnosis of myeloma

Abstract

Myeloma is the most common primary bone cancer and late diagnosis results in end-organ damage i.e. bone destruction. Despite guidance that Whole-Body MRI (WB-MRI) should be first-line imaging for early myeloma diagnosis and annually monitoring for smouldering myeloma, a 2021 national survey indicated that only 27% of centres used WB-MRI.

Barriers to implementation included: radiographer training (40%); protocol optimisation (30%) and radiologist training (45%).

This 18-month project was initiated to address the unmet need of radiographer training as well as to optimise each site’s scanner to run the standardised protocol recommended by MY-RADS.