Value of spectral CT parameters in predicting the efficacy of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for gastric cancer
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Updated: Jul 12, 2025
Gene Regulation and Targeted Therapy in Gastric Cancer Peritoneal Metastasis: Radiological Findings from Dual Energy CT and PET/CT
Published on: January 22, 2018
1Department of Radiology, Lanzhou University Second Hospital, Chengguan District, Lanzhou, 730030, China; Second Clinical School, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730030, China; Key Laboratory of Medical Imaging of Gansu Province, Lanzhou, 730030, China; Gansu International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Base of Medical Imaging Artificial Intelligence, Lanzhou, 730030, China.
Aim:
To investigate the value of pre-chemotherapy spectral computed tomography (CT) parameters in predicting neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) response in gastric cancer (GC).
Materials And Methods:
Sixty patients with GC who received NAC and underwent spectral CT examination before chemotherapy were enrolled retrospectively and divided into a responsive group and a non-responsive group according to the postoperative pathological tumour regression grade. Clinical characteristics were collected. The iodine concentration (IC), water concentration (WC), and effective atomic number (Eff-Z) of the portal venous phases were measured before chemotherapy, and IC was normalised to that of the aorta to provide the normalised IC (NIC). An independent samples t-test, Mann-Whitney U-test, or chi-square test was used to analyse the differences between the two groups, and the receiver operating curve (ROC) was used to evaluate the predictive performance of different variables.
Results:
The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was lower in the responsive group than in the non-responsive group (p<0.05). IC, NIC, and Eff-Z values were significantly higher in the responsive group than in the non-responsive group (p<0.01). The areas under the ROC curves for the NLR, IC, NIC, and Eff-Z were 0.694, 0.688, 0.799, and 0.690, respectively. The combination of NIC, Eff-Z, and NLR values showed good diagnostic performance in predicting response to NAC in GC, with an area under the ROC curve of 0.857, 76.92% sensitivity, 80% accuracy, and 85.71% specificity.
Conclusion:
Spectral CT parameters may serve as non-invasive tools for predicting the response to NAC in patients with GC.
