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Note: This is a series of images of CT scan in the diagnosis, staging and therapeutic follow-up of colorectal cancers, which I prepared for a talk that I had to give to general practitioners. By ‘prepared’ I mean I had selected representative images and annotated them to show the abnormality to laymen. So this series is not going to be exhaustively informative or educative. I would suggest places like this and this for more information on colorectal cancers for health professionals and patients who stumble in here from search engines.

Ascending Colon

Coronal MPR¹ image showing a circumferential ‘apple core‘ mass in the proximal Ascending Colon (yellow arrow).

The following sagittal MIP¹ image shows the same mass (yellow arrow). Both images show iodinated oral contrast in the small bowel, contrast enema in the large bowel and intravenous contrast enhancement of the abdominal organs and blood vessels.

Though this is not a quiz, if you found the ascites in the first image you can pat yourself on the back and award yourself five bonus points.

Footnote:

1. I tried to link to online definitions for these commonly used radiological acronyms but I could not find any on a cursory Google search. MPR stands for Multiplanar Reformation. MIP stands for Maximum Intensity Projection. It can also stand for Mininimum Intensity Projection, but most often that is represented as MinIP. The other acronyms that one is likely to come across are SSD for Shaded Surface Display and VR for Volume Rendering. All these are post-processing techniques for reconstructing CT images in other body planes after acquiring the actual CT scan in the traditional axial (or transverse) plane.

For further information on colorectal cancers:

US National Cancer Institute’s Colon and Rectal Cancer Home Page and this online booklet for patients.

Mayo Clinic’s Colon Cancer Page.

Other posts in this series:

• CT scan in Colorectal Cancer
• CT in Colorectal Cancer - 3
• CT in Colorectal Cancer - 4
• CT in Colorectal Cancer - 5
• CT in Colorectal Cancer - 6

Tags: colorectal cancer, Computed Tomography

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