Small bowel neoplasms: enhancement patterns and differentiation using post-contrast multiphasic multidetector CT.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study was to analyze the enhancement patterns of small bowel neoplasms on post-contrast multiphasic multidetector CT and to assess the diagnostic capacity for differentiating five tumor types.

METHODS: We performed a retrospective study of data on 92 small bowel neoplasms. The neoplasms were categorized into five groups according to pathology findings, not imaging findings (23 adenocarcinomas; 22 lymphomas; 19 metastases; 18 gastrointestinal stromal tumors [GIST]; 10 neuroendocrine tumors [NET]).

RESULTS: GIST and NET demonstrated a hypervascular pattern in the multiphasic dynamic study. Adenocarcinoma and lymphoma showed a delayed enhancement pattern. Metastasis was classified as an intermediate enhancement pattern. The receiver operating characteristic analyses revealed that attenuation thresholds could be set with acceptable accuracies for most of the small bowel neoplasms.

CONCLUSIONS: Multiphasic dynamic studies may have the potential to improve the diagnostic capacity of multidetector CT for small bowel neoplasms.