18F-FDG PET/MR for diagnosis of primary central nervous system lymphoma: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND

Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) is a rare form of extranodal non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with poor prognosis. 18F-flourodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance (MR) combines the advantages of PET and MR. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity of PET/MR for the diagnosis of PCNSL by means of a meta-analysis.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

Wanfang Database, SinoMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Cochrane Library, PubMed and Embase will be searched for candidate studies about PET/MRI in PCNSL diagnosis from database inception to October 2024. The following keywords will be applied: "Primary central nervous system lymphoma", "Primary intracerebral lymphoma", "Positron Emission Tomography Magnetic Resonance" and "PET-MR". Studies meeting the inclusion criteria will be included. Studies without full true positive, false positive, false negative and true negative values; studies reported in languages other than English and Chinese; conference abstracts not available in full text and case reports will be excluded. Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies will be used to evaluate the study quality. The STATA software (V.15.0) and Meta-Disc software (V.1.4) will be used to carry out meta-analysis. When heterogeneity is evident, subgroup analysis will be used to investigate the origin of heterogeneity. The robustness of the analysis will be checked with sensitivity analysis.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

This research is based on public databases and does not require ethical approval. The results will seek publication in a peer-reviewed journal after the completion of this systematic review and meta-analysis.

PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER

CRD42023472570.