Advance in the diagnosis of esophageal carcinoma

Purpose: to assess the clinical utility of computed radiographic images processed with adaptive spatial filtering (ASF) in the diagnosis of esophageal carcinoma

Material and Methods: After determining the optimal values for ASF image parameters in double-contrast barium studies, we used ASF to process the esophagograms of 35 patients with 37 esophageal carcinomas (superficial 20, advanced 17). the image quality of each lesion was evaluated independently by four radiologists on the basis of detectability, extent, and surface structure. the scoring was: 1 when the ASF image was superior to the original; — 1 when the converse was true; and 0 when quality of images was equal

Results: in superficial carcinoma, the mean scores for image quality with regard to detectability, extent, and surface structure were 0.19, 0.48, and 0.31 respectively. in advanced carcinoma, the scores were 0.00, 0.76, and 0.25 respectively

Conclusion: ASF offers an improved image quality which is valuable in the evaluation of esophageal carcinoma, particularly in the detection of superficial carcinomas and in the identification of intraepithelial extension