Table 1.

Current limitations of qualitative imaging based on morphological features used for the assessment of colorectal cancer

Diagnostic task	Limits of qualitative imaging
Primary tumor identification	Early stages of CRC hard to detect
	Neoplastic and inflammatory tissue not easily differentiable
Lymph node involvement	Lymph node size criteria often misleading and insufficient
	Shape, border irregularity and structural heterogeneity hard to assess for small lymph nodes
Prediction of early responses to chemotherapy and radiation therapy	Not possible with qualitative evaluation alone
Evaluation of treatment responses and the detection of recurrent disease	Differentiation of residual or recurrent neoplastic tissue from posttreatment induced fibrosis or necrosis is often challenging

CRC: Colorectal cancer.