Abstract： Lymph node metastasis is the main mode of rectal cancer metastasis and is closely related to the treatment and prognosis of patients.MRI is essential in the assessment of lymph node status.Metastatic lymph nodes may show abnormal size,shape or internal signals on conventional MRI,but they are highly subjective.Functional MRI techniques such as diffusion-weighted imaging,introvoxel incoherent motion,diffusion kurtosis imaging,dynamic contrast enhanced MRI,magnetic resonance spectroscopy,blood oxygen-dependent MRI,and ultrasmall super paramagnetic iron oxide MRI can be used to evaluate lymph node status more objectively through quantitative measurement.However,at present,these techniques and their parameter values have not formed a unified standard for the evaluation of lymph node status.Imaging omics can excavate more information from images and has a good prospect in the future.This paper summarizes the application of these techniques and their parameters in evaluating regional lymph node status,in order to provide a reliable basis for clinical diagnosis and treatment,and provide a reference direction for future research.