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It is important to accurately determine the resectability of thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) for treatment decision-making. Previous studies have revealed that the CT-derived gross tumor volume (GTV) is associated with the staging of ESCC. The present study aimed to explore whether the anatomical distribution-based GTV of non-distant metastatic thoracic ESCC measured using multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) could quantitatively determine the resectability. For this purpose, 473 consecutive patients with biopsy-confirmed non-distant metastatic thoracic ESCC who underwent contrast-enhanced CT were randomly divided into a training cohort (TC; 376 patients) and validation cohort (VC; 97 patients). GTV was retrospectively measured using MDCT. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify the determinants of the resectability of ESCC in the TC. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed to clarify whether anatomical distribution-based GTV could help quantitatively determinate resectability. Unweighted Cohen's Kappa tests in VC were used to assess the performance of the previous models. Univariate analysis demonstrated that sex, anatomic distribution, cT stage, cN stage and GTV were related to the resectability of ESCC in the TC (all P<0.05). Multivariate analysis revealed that GTV [P<0.001; odds ratio (OR) 1.158] and anatomic distribution (P=0.027; OR, 1.924) were independent determinants of resectability. ROC analysis revealed that the GTV cut-offs for the determination of the resectability of the upper, middle and lower thoracic portions were 23.57, 22.89 and 22.58 cm3, respectively, with areas under the ROC curves of >0.9. Unweighted Cohen's Kappa tests revealed an excellent performance of the ROC models in the upper, middle and lower thoracic portions with Cohen k-values of 0.913, 0.879 and 0.871, respectively. On the whole, the present study demonstrated that GTV and the anatomic distribution of non-distant metastatic thoracic ESCC may be independent determinants of resectability, and anatomical distribution-based GTV can effectively be used to quantitatively determine resectability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]