Quantification of iodine concentration by dual-energy CT in patients with acute pancreatitis.

OBJECTIVE

To determine whether pancreatic iodine concentrations quantified by dual-energy CT differ between patients with acute pancreatitis and those without imaging or laboratory findings indicative of pancreatic disease.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

We compared findings on single-phase dual-energy CT images acquired 55seconds after the intravenous administration of contrast material in 27 patients with acute pancreatitis who underwent the examination 48 to 72hours after the onset of symptoms versus in 11 patients (controls) with no imaging findings suggestive of pancreatic disease and normal amylase and lipase who underwent the examination with the same protocol for other purposes. Imaging postprocessing included the generation of iodine maps. Three regions of interest were selected (pancreatic head, body, and tail) to obtain iodine concentrations (mg/ml) to compare between groups. Iodine concentrations were also calculated a second time by normalizing the density of iodine with the aorta.

RESULTS

The mean density of iodine was 2.5mg/ml in patients with pancreatitis vs. 3.65mg/ml in controls (p = 0.02). In three patients with glandular necrosis, the density of iodine was 1.53mg/ml.

CONCLUSIONS

The concentration of iodine in the pancreas measured with dual-energy CT differs significantly between patients with initial-stage acute pancreatitis and those without imaging or laboratory findings indicative of pancreatic disease.