Gastric cancer staging at isotropic MDCT including coronal and sagittal MPR images: Endoscopically diagnosed early vs. advanced gastric cancer

Background: The aims of this study are to evaluate and compare the accuracies of isotropic multi-detector row CT (MDCT) including multiplanar reconstruction (MPR) images for preoperative staging of endoscopically diagnosed early gastric cancer (eEGC) and advanced gastric cancer (eAGC). Methods: One hundred and five patients with endoscopically proven gastric cancer underwent isotropic MDCT. Three independent radiologists evaluated T and N staging both on transverse images only and on three orthogonal MPR images. The staging of each tumor was surgico-pathologically confirmed. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and the Wilcoxon signed ranked test were used for statistical analyses. Results: In 30 eAGCs, the accuracies for T and N staging with MPR imaging were better than those with transverse imaging (each P < 0.05). In 34 eEGCs, however, only the accuracy of T2 or higher with MPR imaging was higher than that with transverse imaging (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Isotropic MDCT with MPR images including coronal or sagittal reconstructions can improve the accuracies of preoperative T and N staging of eAGC, while having little impact on the accuracy for eEGC.