The Diagnostic Accuracy of MRI in Rectal Mutinous Carcinoma

INTRODUCTION Muc~nous carcinoma is a subtype of adenocarcinoma containing abundant extracellular mucin within the tumor (1, 2). According to the WHO cnterla for mutinous carcinoma, the mucin composition should be at least 50% within the tumor for this diagnosis (1). Colorectal mutinous carcinomas tend to have been have lower curative resection rate and have an increased incidence of distant metastasis following curative resection (3). Therefore, preoperative accurate prediction of this tumor is helpful in surgical planning. MR findings of mutinous carcinoma have been reported as characteristic high signal on TZ-weighted fast spin echo images and reveals good correlation with pathology (4,5). However, there the diagnostic accuracy of MR imaging in differentiating mutinous carcinoma from rectal malignant tumors has not bee assessed in a large series. The purpose of this study was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of MR imaging in histological typing of rectal mutinous carcinoma.