A Preliminary Study Of Dynamic Contrast-enhanced MRI In Predicting Early Response To Chemoradiotherapy In Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

ObjectiveTo investigate the value of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging(DCE-MRI)in predicting early response to chemoradiation therapy in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma(ESCC).MethodsFifty-two patients who were confirmed ESCC with pathologically and recived chemoradiotherapy were collected retrospectively in this study.All patients underwent thoracic routine MRI and DCE-MRI before treatment.Quantitative parameters of DCE-MRI were generated from the volumetric analysis of the whole field of tumors of interest by the Omni-Kinetics software,including volume transfer constant(Ktrans),rate constant(Kep),extravascular extracellular space fractional volume(Ve).Four weeks after the treatment,the patients were categorized as responder group and non-responder group according to the criteria of response evaluation in solid tumors(RECIST 1.1).The Mann-Whitney U test or independent samples t-test was used to compare parameters between the two response groups.The predictive ability of quantitative DCE-MRI parameters was analyzed by receiver operating characteristic curve(ROC).ResultsPretreatment Ktrans,Kep and Vc values were 0.42±0.256/min,0.86±0.626/min,0.41(0.27～0.48),respectively,in the responder group,and 0.31±0.116/min,0.44±0.356/min,0.42(0.20～0.50),respectively,in the non-responder group.There was significant difference between the two groups for Ktrans,Kep(Z=-2.857,P=0.004;Z=-2.529,P=0.015,respectively).However,there was no statistically significant differences between the two groups for Ve(P=0.889).The Kep showed a preferable performance for predicting response with AUC.sensitivity and specificity of 0.717.81.25%and 66.67%,respectively.ConclusionDCE-MRI contributed to predicting early response to chemoradiation therapy in patients with ESCC,Kep may become a better predictor to classify which patients will benefit from chemoradiation.