Table 4. Comparison of diagnostic efficacy of preoperative N-staging in gastric cancer using ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT, DWI and MDCT based on meta-analyses.

Study	Techniques	Sensitivity (95% CI)	Specificity (95% CI)	AUC (95% CI)
Present study	PET/CT	0.52 (0.39–0.64)	0.88 (0.61–0.97)	0.66 (0.62–0.70)
Present study	DWI	0.79 (0.73–0.85)	0.69 (0.61–0.77)	0.81 (0.77–0.84)
Wang et al. [43]	MDCT	0.67 (0.66–0.69)	0.84 (0.83–0.85)	0.83 (ND)

Abbreviations: ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT, ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computer tomography; DWI = diffusion weighted imaging; MDCT = multi-detector computed tomography; 95% CI = 95% confidence intervals; AUC = area under summary receiver operating characteristic curve; ND = not documented.