Differentiation of hypovascular pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using contrast-enhanced computed tomography

PLoS One. 2019 Feb 1;14(2):e0211566. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211566. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Hypovascular pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (hypo-PNETs) are often misdiagnosed as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). However, the treatment options and prognosis of PNETs and PDAC are substantially different. This retrospective study differentiated hypo-PNETs from PDAC using contrast-enhanced CT (CE-CT). Clinical data and CE-CT findings, including tumor location, size, boundary, pancreatic duct dilatation, local invasion or metastases, tumor contrast enhancement, and tumor-to-pancreas enhancement ratio, were compared between 39 PDACs and 18 hypo-PNETs. At CT imaging, hypo-PNETs showed a higher frequency of a well-defined margin and lower frequencies of pancreatic duct dilatation and local invasion or metastasis when compared with PDAC (p < 0.05 for all). The mean attenuation of hypo-PNETs at the arterial and portal venous phase was significantly higher than that of PDAC (p < 0.001, p = 0.003, respectively). Similar results were observed in tumor-to-pancreas enhancement ratio. Tumor attenuation and tumor-to-pancreas enhancement ratio at the arterial phase showed the largest area under the curve (AUC) of 0.888 and 0.812 with 83.3-88.9% of sensitivity and 61.6-77.0% of specificity. Pancreatic duct dilatation, local invasion or metastasis, and tumor attenuation at the portal venous phase also showed acceptable AUC (0.703-0.748). Thus CE-CT features, especially the enhancement degree at the arterial phases, may be useful for differentiating hypo-PNETs from PDAC using CE-CT.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Area Under Curve
  • Carcinoma, Pancreatic Ductal / diagnostic imaging*
  • Carcinoma, Pancreatic Ductal / pathology
  • Diagnosis, Differential
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Neoplasm Metastasis
  • Neuroendocrine Tumors / diagnostic imaging*
  • Neuroendocrine Tumors / pathology
  • Pancreatic Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging*
  • Pancreatic Neoplasms / pathology
  • ROC Curve
  • Radiographic Image Enhancement
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science foundation of China (81771899) to ZQW and the Key Program of Research and Development of Jiangsu Province (BE2017772) to ZQW. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.