A preoperative assessment of adjacent organ invasion by stomach carcinoma with high resolution computed tomography

Adjacent organ invasion by stomach carcinoma on computed tomography (CT) was studied. CT images of tumors and their adjacent organs, whose invasion was assessed at surgery, were retrospectively analyzed in 51 gastric cancer patients. An absence of fat planes or an irregularity of the border between the tumor and adjacent organs was not found to be significantly related with invasion. The mean densities of the region of interest (ROI) set at the border were greater at the invasion sites (60.0 +/- 38.1) than at noninvasion sites (35.6 +/- 55.5) (P < 0.05). The standard deviation of the densities in the ROI was not affected by invasion. The discriminant function determined invasion to the pancreas, liver, and colon with an accuracy of 75%, 61%, and 78%, respectively. In diagnosing the invasion of stomach cancer on CT, the conventional criteria were not practical, while a quantitative analysis of the density in the ROI with high resolution CT was considered to improve the accuracy.