This study aims to investigate the role of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) in ESCC patients receiving neoadjuvant concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT), and the efficacy of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values in predicting pathologic response to neoadjuvant CCRT. Twenty-eight locally advanced ESCC patients treated with neoadjuvant CCRT followed by radical resection were prospectively enrolled. DW-MRI was recommended to be performed within 2 weeks before and 4-6 weeks after neoadjuvant CCRT. The calculated ADCs pre- (ADC1) and post- (ADC2) neoadjuvant CCRT, the definite (ΔADC) and percentage changes (ΔADC%) were analyzed for the efficacy of predicting pathologic response to neoadjuvant CCRT. Twenty patients had been identified as responders (tumor regression grade 1-2). Among them, ADC2 (3.02 ± 0.84 vs. 2.12 ± 0.44 × 10-3 mm2/s, P = 0.001) and ΔADC (1.22 ± 0.78 vs 0.64 ± 0.26 × 10-3 mm2/s, P = 0.007) were significantly higher than those of nonresponders (tumor regression grade: 3-5). Receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed that ADC2 exhibited an overall accuracy of in 71.4% in predicting pathologic response, with a sensitivity of 60.0%, a specificity of 100%, a positive predictive value of 100%, and a negative predictive value of 50.0%, when 3.04 × 10-3 mm2/s was used as the cutoff value. ADC value could be useful in predicting pathologic response to neoadjuvant CCRT in ESCC patients. High postneoadjuvant CCRT ADC is a predictive indicator for good response.

Oesophageal cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide. Currently, the tumour, node, metastasis (TNM) staging system is the primary method for determining its extent and prognosis, however, data suggest this system does not predict prognosis accurately. Research has, therefore, concentrated on searching for specific biomarkers. Paxillin has been shown to play an important role in controlling cell spread and migration. Its over-expression is considered to correlate with the prognosis of some types of cancers, however, the relationship between paxillin expression and clinical outcome in oesophageal cancer has not been investigated. This study determined the expression of paxillin by immunohistochemistry on the tissue microarray of 100 oesophageal squamous cell cancer patients followed up for a mean of 55 months. Paxillin was over-expressed in tumours in 27/100 cases, compared with 6/100 cases for adjacent non-tumoural cells. No correlation occurred between expression of paxillin and overall patient survival, hence paxillin is not an effective prognostic marker in these patients.

The functional significance of BOLD signals in white matter (WM) remains unclear. The current study investigated whether 7T BOLD fMRI signal from visual WM tracts contains high fidelity retinotopic information and whether it correlates with the effective connectivity between visual areas. Population receptive field (pRF) analysis of the 7T retinotopy dataset from the Human Connectome Project revealed clear contralateral retinotopic representations from two visual WM bundles: optic radiation (OR) and vertical occipital fasciculus (VOF). The retinotopic organization of OR is consistent with post-mortem studies. The pRF size of WM voxels also increases with eccentricity. Based on the retinotopic maps of OR, we investigated whether BOLD signals in OR during visual stimulation are related to the resting-state effective connectivity between the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and the primary visual cortex (V1). Results show that visually-evoked BOLD responses in OR correlate with the feedforward and feedback connectivity between the LGN and V1 during resting state. These findings demonstrate that WM BOLD signals contain high fidelity information such as visual field maps, and also predict the functional connectivity of brain areas.