Role of Dual energy CT in diagnosis and preoperative staging of gastric carcinoma

Abstract

Gastric cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide with approximately 989,600 new cases and 738,000 deaths per year, accounting for about 8 percent of new cancers (Bohle et al., 2011). A good prognosis for patients with this disease requires choosing the correct therapy, and making the right therapeutic choice requires accurate preoperative staging (Kwon, 2011). The recent development of multi-detector row CT (MDCT) scanner has allowed imaging with a thinner section collimation, translating into increased quality on transverse computed tomography scans and multiplanar reconstruction, contributing to the improved accuracy of TNM staging (Li et al., 2012). Nowadays MDCT has been widely used in preoperative staging of gastric cancer. However there are still some controversial problems. Regarding the T-staging, the results from previous reports on the usefulness of CT for T-staging of gastric cancer have shown large variations (overall accuracy rates of 43–82% (Shimizu et al., 2005). Over-diagnosis sometimes happens when the interface of the lesion and peripheral