Preoperative Work-up: Conventional Radiology, Ultrasonography, CT Scan, and MRI

The optimal assessment and staging of esophageal cancer (EC) is crucial as it has an important impact on patient selection with respect to appropriate treatment (surgery, neo-adjuvant therapy with or without surgery, palliative treatment) [1]. Preoperative evaluation requires knowledge of the esophageal anatomy and of the patterns of tumor spread. As mentioned in Chap. 2, the staging criteria for esophageal cancer include depth of local invasion, nodal involvement, and presence or absence of distant metastases. The various imaging modalities have different strengths and weaknesses in evaluating each of these criteria such that a combined multimodality imaging approach is usually necessary for an optimal assessment [2]