Influence of the low-dose CE-MDCT scanning protocol parameters on the results of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma radiomic analysis

Abstract

To investigate the dependence of textural parameters of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma on using standard and low-dose CT protocols.Materials and methods. The study included 52 consecutive patients with histologically confirmed pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma who underwent contrast enhanced computed tomography using standard (120 kV) and low-dose (100 kV) scanning protocols. We compared radiomics features of the identical histological tumors in all scanning phases.Results. We calculated 53 radiomics features in all types of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma grade differentiation for all scanning phases. We identified that out of 53 features of texture analysis, less than half was statistically different for each scan phase (11 parameters (20.8%) for the unenhanced phase; 18 parameters (34%) for the arterial; 19 parameters (35.8%) for the venous and delayed scanning phases), in all types of tumor differentiation (GLCM_ Contrast, GLCM_Correlation, GLCM_Dissimilarity, GLRLM_SRHGE etc., p < 0.05).The diagnostic accuracy of more than 50% of the radiomics features is preserved when changing kV in the CT scan protocol.Conclusion. The use of a low-dose CT protocol doesn’t affect the diagnostic accuracy of the features of texture analysis in the preoperative assessment of the degree of differentiation of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.