Synthetic magnetic resonance quantitative relaxation maps for preoperative staging of rectal cancer

To preoperative assessment of tumor and node staging for rectal cancer patients is very important. This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of predicting pathological TN staging with synthetic MRI quantitative relaxation maps for rectal cancer patients. A total of 123 patients were identified in this study. Our results showed that the T1 and T2 values from synthetic MRI can distinguish effectively between pT1-2 and pT3-4 group, pN- and pN+ group, which is vital to selection of therapy strategy for rectal cancer patients.