Preoperative local staging of rectal cancer with endorectal MR imaging: comparison with histopathologic findings.

The purpose of this prospective study was to assess the accuracy of endorectal MR imaging in the preoperative local staging of rectal cancers. In 20 cases, we correlated endorectal MR imaging findings with postoperative histopathologic staging according to TNM classification. The accuracy of endorectal MR for determining the T stage of rectal cancer was 85%. The sensitivity and specificity for detecting lymph node metastases were 90.9% and 55.5%, respectively.