Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Imaging Diagnosis and Recent Progress

With continuous development of imaging techniques, medical imaging plays an important role in diagnosis of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC). Computed tomography (CT) is the basic mean for diagnosis of NPC and has an advantage over diagnosis of those involving the skull base. Magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) has an excellent soft tissue contrast resolution and it is superior to CT for detecting areas involving early primary focal invasion and retropharyngeal lymph node metastasis. With positron emission tomography(PET) imaging alone, the anatomical localization is unclear but when combined with CT, it shows high sensitivity in the identification of primary tumor, lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis. In this article, we review the current imaging methods commonly used in clinical diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and discuss the most recent advances.