Quantitative tissue blood flow evaluation of pancreatic tumor: comparison between xenon CT technique and perfusion CT technique based on deconvolution analysis.

PURPOSE: There has been one report that tissue blood flow (TBF) quantification with xenon CT was effective in predicting the therapeutic response to an anticancer drug in pancreatic cancer. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the correlation between the TBF of pancreatic tumors calculated with xenon CT and those with perfusion CT, in order to evaluate whether perfusion CT could replace xenon CT.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nine patients with pathologically proved pancreatic tumors who underwent both xenon CT and perfusion CT were included.
RESULTS: Quantitative TBF of pancreatic tumors measured by perfusion CT ranged from 22.1 to 196.2 ml/min/100 g (mean+/-SD, 52.6+/-54.8 ml/min/100 g). In contrast, those obtained by xenon CT ranged from 10.3 to 173.6 ml/min/100 g (mean+/-SD, 47.4+/-49.4 ml/min/100 g). There was a good linear correlation between xenon CT and perfusion CT (y=0.8537x+2.48, R2=0.895: p<0.05).
CONCLUSION: The TBF of pancreatic tumors measured by xenon CT and perfusion CT techniques showed a close linear correlation. We can expect that perfusion CT based on the deconvolution algorithm may replace xenon CT to predict the effect of pancreatic tumor treatment with anticancer drugs.