This study investigated the utility of quantifying iodine concentration (IC) in perigastric adipose tissue, using dual-energy computed tomography (DECT), for the detection of T4astage gastric cancer. Fifty-four patients with gastric cancer were enrolled at the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University between January and June 2013. Patients were imaged preoperatively with conventional computed tomography (CT) scans and DECT, and the IC in perigastric fat adjacent to the tumor calculated from arterial phase (AP) and portal venous phase (PVP) images. The patients subsequently received surgical treatment (gastrectomy), and histologic analysis of resected specimens was used as a 'gold standard' reference for cancer staging. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was employed to assess the utility of DECT for identifying T4a-stage gastric cancer, with optimal IC thresholds determined from the area under the ROC curve (AUC). Postoperative histology revealed that 32 patients had serosal invasion (group A), and 22 did not (group B). The accuracy of conventional CT for distinguishing stage T4 from non-T4 stages was 68.5% (37/54). IC was significantly higher in group A than in group B (AP: 0.60 +/- 0.34 vs. 0.09 +/- 0.19 mg/mL, p < 0.001; PVP: 0.83 +/- 0.41 vs. 0.27 +/- 0.21 mg/mL, p < 0.001). The sensitivity, specificity and AUC for detecting serosal invasion were 77.1%, 79.2% and 0.89 at an IC threshold of 0.25 mg/mL for AP images; and 80.0%, 79.2% and 0.90 at an IC threshold of 0.45 mg/mL for PVP images. These results indicated that Iodine quantification in perigastric fat using DECT is an accurate method for detecting serosal invasion by gastric cancer.