Only when all contribute their firewood can they build up a big fire

Imaging plays a crucial role in the identification, staging and follow-up of patients diagnosed with a thymic epithelial tumor (TET). Staging and complete resection (1-3) have consistently shown to be associated with improved survival in patients with TETs. It is because of this that patients with local spread of disease or even pleural spread of disease receive neoadjuvant therapy, either chemotherapy alone or in combination with radiation therapy prior to resection, in an attempt to decrease tumor burden and decrease microscopic spread to enable a complete resection. However, final staging is performed after resection, after pathology inspection. Thus the identification of tumor spread relies solely on imaging, primarily on computed tomography (CT) scanning. For this, CT has to be accurate: not over stage patients and expose them to damaging therapy and not under stage them, potentially leading to incomplete resection with worse survival.