Evaluation of advanced gastric carcinoma with monoenergetic spectrum curve of dual-source dual-energy computed tomography.

ASTRIC cancer is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers and leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Computed tomography (CT) is routinely used to observe the tumor location, size, invasion, and metastasis, which are necessary for tumor staging and therefore treatment planning. With the recently introduced dual-source dual-energy CT (DECT), different kevS images could be obtained, the feature of which depending on the attenuation coefficient of the scanned tissue. We investigated spectrum characteristics of the curve of normal gastric tissue and those with gastric cancer, normal fat and invased fat, metastatic lymph nodes in DECT. Forty patients were consecutively enrolled from December 2010 to May 2011, including 35 males and 5 females at the age of 60.2±8.5 years (range, 29-74 years). The diagnosis of gastric cancer in these patients was confirmed by endoscopic biopsy. After the DECT examination, the patients received surgery within 1 week. Postoperative pathological examination revealed infiltration into adjacent fat tissue and metastasis in lymph nodes in all the cases. After at least 6 hours of fasting, DECT was performed with tube voltage of 100/Sn140 kVp. Scopolamine butylbromide (10 mg) was administered, and 800 mL water orally taken before scanning. The DECT images were sent to a workstation for spectral analysis. A round region-of-interest