Shear-wave elastography predicts T-restaging and pathologic complete response of rectal cancer post neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

Purpose: To investigate the value of shear-wave elastography (SWE) in assessing the response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) in locally advanced rectal cancer.

Methods: In this study, 455 participants with locally advanced rectal cancer who underwent nCRT at our hospital between September 2021 and December 2022 were prospectively enrolled. The participants were randomly divided into training and test cohorts in a 3:2 ratio.