PET/MR Pancreatic Cancer Detection and Surveillance Program

The PI of this project was:

This project was funded by: Radiology RD

The term of this project was: May 2016 to May 2018

The number of subjects scanned during this project was: 16

This is a pilot project for 16 individuals scheduled for surgical resection of their pancreatic adenocarcinoma tumor. If eligible and interested in participating, subjects will be asked to complete a single PET/MR prior to their scheduled surgery. Subjects receiving chemotherapy and radiotherapy to shrink the tumor prior to resection will be asked to complete two research PET/MR scans, one prior to the start of treatment and another prior to surgery.
Primary tumor volume will be estimated from 3 dimensional measurements, and again the measurements derived from pure PET, pure MRI, and conjoint interpretation will be compared to pathological size measurements.

For patients not immediately deemed resectable, but who will be given neoadjuvant chemotherapy, PET standardized uptake values (SUVs) and MR apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values, as well as enhancement characteristics for the pre-therapy imaging will be compared to the immediately pre-surgical imaging set to establish response.

PET/MR results will be compared to results from the clinical dictation of the preoperative CT with CT angiographic examination to determine key differences in interpretation. Surgery will not be affected by research PET/MR results. Comparison of pathological primary tumor size and lymph node and vascular involvement with intraoperative and pathological assessment will determine if PET/MR can really improve staging of pancreatic adenocarcinoma.