ArticleEuropean radiology2023
MRI assessment of rectal cancer response to neoadjuvant therapy: a multireader study.
Article in European radiology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- ESR Essentials: Imaging in colorectal cancer-practice recommendations by ESGAR.European radiology · 2024Guideline
- MRI Predicts Residual Disease and Outcomes in Watch-and-Wait Patients with Rectal Cancer.Radiology · 2024Trial
- Article
- Challenges in rectal cancer MRI: from image acquisition to interpretation.Abdominal radiology (New York) · 2026Review
- Histogram analysis of diffusion kurtosis imaging for T restaging and predicting complete response of locally advanced rectal cancer following neoadjuvant immunotherapy.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2026Article
- MR outperformed CT in evaluating RECIST response to neoadjuvant therapy in locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.European radiology · 2026Article
- Discrepancies between clinical and radiological assessment of complete remission of rectal cancer after neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy.Langenbeck's archives of surgery · 2026Article
- Preoperative Magnetic Resonance Imaging Results Are Concordant with Pathology Staging in Rectal Cancer.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Article
- The predictive value of multi-phase contrast-enhanced MRI for pathological complete response after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in rectal cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Article
- Enhancing postoperative recurrence assessment in gastric and colorectal cancer patients with intraperitoneal fluorouracil implants: overcoming the diagnostic challenge of fluorouracil implant-related tumor-like lesions.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2025Article
- Enhancing the role of MRI in rectal cancer: advances from staging to prognosis prediction.European radiology · 2025Review
- Organ preservation in rectal cancer: opportunity within boundaries.International journal of colorectal disease · 2025Article
- Article
- Volumetric histogram analysis of amide proton transfer-weighted imaging for predicting complete tumor response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced rectal adenocarcinoma.European radiology · 2025Article
- Reliability of rectal MRI radiomic features: Comparing rectal MRI radiomic features across reader expertise levels, image segmentation technique, and timing of rectal MRI in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer.European journal of radiology · 2025Article
- MRI is more accurate than FDG-PET in assessing complete response in rectal cancer patients after neoadjuvant therapy.Langenbeck's archives of surgery · 2025Article
- Deformable Mapping of Rectal Cancer Whole-Mount Histology with Restaging MRI at Voxel Scale: A Feasibility Study.Radiology. Imaging cancer · 2024Article
- Review
- Disparities in Outcomes following Resection of Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2024Article
- Interpretation of Complete Tumor Response on MRI Following Chemoradiotherapy of Rectal Cancer: Inter-Reader Agreement and Associated Factors in Multi-Center Clinical Practice.Korean journal of radiology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesA watch and wait strategy with the goal of organ preservation is an emerging treatment paradigm for rectal cancer following neoadjuvant treatment. However, the selection of appropriate patients remains a challenge. Most previous efforts to measure the accuracy of MRI in assessing rectal cancer response used a small number of radiologists and did not report variability among them.
methodsTwelve radiologists from 8 institutions assessed baseline and restaging MRI scans of 39 patients. The participating radiologists were asked to assess MRI features and to categorize the overall response as complete or incomplete. The reference standard was pathological complete response or a sustained clinical response for > 2 years.
resultsWe measured the accuracy and described the interobserver variability of interpretation of rectal cancer response between radiologists at different medical centers. Overall accuracy was 64%, with a sensitivity of 65% for detecting complete response and specificity of 63% for detecting residual tumor. Interpretation of the overall response was more accurate than the interpretation of any individual feature. Variability of interpretation was dependent on the patient and imaging feature investigated. In general, variability and accuracy were inversely correlated.
conclusionsMRI-based evaluation of response at restaging is insufficiently accurate and has substantial variability of interpretation. Although some patients' response to neoadjuvant treatment on MRI may be easily recognizable, as seen by high accuracy and low variability, that is not the case for most patients. KEY POINTS: • The overall accuracy of MRI-based response assessment is low and radiologists differed in their interpretation of key imaging features. • Some patients' scans were interpreted with high accuracy and low variability, suggesting that these patients' pattern of response is easier to interpret. • The most accurate assessments were those of the overall response, which took into consideration both T2W and DWI sequences and the assessment of both the primary tumor and the lymph nodes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.