Abstract: Objective : To investigate the influences of gender, age, tumor length, depth of infiltration, and lymphnode status on the fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake of esophageal carcinoma. Methods : From June 2004 toNovember 2006, 68 patients with pre-surgical esophageal carcinoma who were newly diagnosed by wholebody 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET/CT imaging were enrolled. Tumor length, invasive depth, and lymph nodestatus were determined using postoperative pathology. We analyzed the effect of gender, age, tumor length,metastasis, and TNM staging on FDG uptake. Results : A significant difference was found in FDG uptake val-ues of primary lesions among groups with lesions of different length. There was no statistical significance inFDG uptake values among groups of different ages or genders. There was a positive correlation between theSUVmax and the invasive depth ( P =0.000). A significant difference was also found in FDG uptake betweenthe group with lymph node metastasis and the group without lymph node metastasis ( P =0.000). SUVmax waspositively correlated with lymph node metastasis and invasive depth ( r =0.852, P =0.000). Conclusion : Thelength and depth of primary lesions are correlated to FDG uptake in esophageal carcinoma patients. In-creased maximum standardized uptake value of the primary lesion may indicate lymph node metastasis andlate stage esophageal carcinoma.