## 3 Results
### Characteristics of the Included Studies  
This systematic review included 41 studies; 37 studies had a retrospective nature, 2 studies did not mention their nature, while only two studies had a prospective nature. The studies were published from across the world (9 Turkey, 4 China, 4 United States of America, 3 Egypt, 2 Italy, 3 Netherlands, 2 Spain, 2 United Kingdom, 1 Denmark, 1 France, 1 Germany, 1 Hong Kong, 1 India, 1 Japan, 2 South Korea, 1 Lebanon, 1 Malaysian, 1 Mexico, 1 Qatar). The 41 studies included a total of 6147 NHL patients. Considering the age range, 35 studies included adult patients, 5 studies included paediatric patients and 1 study included a mixed population of adult and paediatric patients. The [18F]FDG PET/CT and BMB were performed for all patients in the included studies, before treatment in 30 studies, and five studies reported that it was performed before and after treatment, and six studies did not report when it was performed. Among the 41 included studies, 23 articles used the BMB as the reference standard test, 9 articles used both BMB and follow-up [18F]FDG PET/CT, and 9 articles did not mention what they used. Regarding the BMB site evaluation, 24 studies mentioned that it was unilaterally performed at the posterior iliac crest, 5 studies stated that it was performed bilaterally, while the remaining studies did not report any details about this. The interval time between the PET/CT and BMB varied for each study, depending on the NHL subtype from 0 to 0-104 days (Table 2). The interpretation of PET/CT was performed qualitatively in 23 studies and both qualitative and quantitively by using SUV threshold in the remaining 18 studies. Diagnostic performance (sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values (PPV), and negative predictive values (NPV)) were recorded for all studies for both PET/CT and BMB. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Participants Details**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Protocol**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Protocol**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Protocol**} \\ \hline
**Hot Author** & **Country** & **Prs** & **No. of Male** & **Age** & **Age Range** & **Political Re-** & **Political Re-** & **where** & **of** **the** & **of** **the** & **of** **the** &  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Periodograms Details**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Periodograms Details**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**PFTECT**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Informal**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**BMB**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**PFTECT**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Standard Reference**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Ann Abbeel Singing Patients No. **} \\ \hline
**Final Archive** & **Country** & **Pii** & **No of Male** & **Age** & **Age Range** & **Patient Re-trained** & **Center** & **center** & **size** & **of** & **be & **\#FTECT** & **Size** & **Inception** & **Test**  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Participants Details**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Perspective Details**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Perspective**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Incorrect**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Incorrect**} \\ \hline
**Full Address** & **County** & **Pts** & **No. ** & **Mid. ** & **Age** & **Age Range** & **Political Re-** & **before** &  
NHL was classified based on the Ann Arbor staging system in 23 studies, while the remaining studies did not report staging or used a different method. Finally, the subtype of NHL was recorded whenever possible. Among the 41 studies, the total number of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) was 2336, 1059 for follicular lymphoma (FL), 97 for Mantle Cell lymphoma (MCL), 21 for Burkitt lymphoma (BL), 13 for Primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL), and for Peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) it was 83. In some studies, there was no information regarding the subtype of the NHL, but they generally categorized the patients as having either indolent NHL, aggressive NHL or simply NHL.