Staging of colorectal cancer

•. Colonic cancer should be routinely staged with multidetector CT in chest, abdomen and pelvis to assess complications, metastatic disease and high-risk patients.•. MRI should be offered to rectal cancer patients, unless contraindicated, to guide selective use of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and optimise delayed surgical treatment.•. Optimised MRI technique and interpretation allow assessment of T and N staging and investigation of the potential circumferential resection margin.•. Restaging with MRI after neoadjuvant therapy aids multidisciplinary team decisions.•. Developments in diffusion-weighted imaging may have a role in assessing local disease.Colorectal cancer requires different modalities for accurate staging. Pre-operative staging with multidetector CT (MDCT) for colonic cancer and MRI to assess local disease in rectal cancer are central to multidisciplinary meetings to plan treatment strategy. Staging has shown increased relevance for neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in order to optimise delayed ...