Introduction Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women in the world. Management usually includes surgery for early stage of the disease in cases with no contrindication for surgery. Lymph node metastasis is an indicator for primary chemoradiotherapy. Lymph node involvement is incorporated in FIGO’s 2018 staging system. The involvement should be noted according to the method of detection as either radiological(r) or pathological(p). So, we evaluate MRI and PET CT values to detect nodal metastasis for single center.

Methods This retrospective analysis was performed in patients treated with surgery, who had MRI and PET CT imaging in The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Gynecologic Oncology Surgery division at Akdeniz University School of Medicine between 2004 to 2020. A Total of 139 cases were included in the study where mean age was 49.68.

Results The most frequent symptom was postcoital bleeding. 29.5% cases had histologic node metastasis. Preoperative MRI showed that 56.1% of cases were node metastatic, and this rate was 38.1% for PET CT. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy for MRI were 60.9%, 63.2%, 40.9%, 79.4%, 72.5% respectively and 70.7%, 75.5%, 54.7%, 86%, 74.1% for PET CT respectively. Negative predictive velues are acceptable for both imaging methods. Accuracy of PET CT is higher than MRI to detect nodal metastasis.

Conclusion/Implications MRI and PET CT offer moderate value to detect lymph node metstsis for cervical cancer. Negative predictive value of PET CT is a better indicator for nodal involvement compared to MRI.