DWI Metrics Differentiating Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasms from Pancreatic Cancer: A study in GEM Models

Abstract

Intraductal Papillary Mucinous Neoplasms (IPMN) are recognized as important precursors to invasive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). While IPMN requires surveillance without treatment, a clinical marker is lacking which can identify those undergoing malignant transformation. In two genetic engineered mouse models (KPC and CKS), which resemble human PDAC and IPMN, respectively, we tested the hypothesis that differences in cellular architecture and stromal features between PDAC and IPMN present themselves in DW-MRI and /or DCE-MRI metrics. Our data revealed an almost complete separation of ADC values between CKS (benign) vs. KPC (malignant) tumors and identified histopathological features corroborating the imaging metrics.