Cancer imaging: is it cost-effective?

With expenditure on imaging patients with cancer set to increase in line with rising cancer prevalence, there is a need to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of advanced cancer imaging techniques. Cost-effectiveness studies aim to quantify the cost of providing a service relative to the amount of desirable outcome gained, such as improvements in patient survival. Yet, the impact of imaging on the survival of patients with cancer is small compared to the impact of treatment and is therefore hard to measure directly. Hence, techniques such as decision-tree analysis, that model the impact of imaging on survival, are increasingly used for cost-effectiveness evaluations. Using such techniques, imaging strategies that utilise computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography have been shown to be more cost-effective than non-imaging approaches for the management of certain cancers including lung, prostate and lymphoma. There is stronger evidence to support the cost-effectiveness of advanced cancer imaging for diagnosis, staging and monitoring therapy than for screening. The results of cost-effectiveness evaluations are not directly transferable between countries or tumour types and hence more studies are needed. As many of the techniques developed to assess the evidence base for therapeutic modalities are not readily applicable to diagnostic tests, cancer imaging specialists need to define the methods for health technology assessment that are most appropriate to their speciality.