We evaluated the power of DWIBS in patients with postoperative lymph node recurrence of esophageal cancer and compared with FDG-PET findings. Forty-seven suspected lesions by MDCT were enrolled. No significant difference between DWIBS and PET was observed in sensitivity (95% vs 97%), PPV (83% vs 90%) and overall accuracy rate (81% vs 87%). The ADCs (x10(-3) mm2/s) of recurrent nodes, primary cancer and normal esophagus were 1.124, 1.058 and 2.079, respectively. ADCs of recurrent nodes were significantly lower than those of normal esophagus (p<0.0001). The cut-off ADC line of 1.5 revealed 100% overall accuracy for separating the recurrent lesion from normal esophagus. Noninvasive DWIBS may become a valid modality to discriminate nodal recurrence of esophageal cancer by no means inferior to PET.