Biliopancreatic malignancy current diagnostic possibilities: an overview

Modern imaging of pancreatic cancer remains a daily challenge both for detection and staging. Helical CT scanning, MRI, and more recently endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) all contribute. Demonstration of local vascular anatomy for assessing resectability is increasingly performed by non-invasive methods such as CT and MR angiography avoiding the need for traditional catheter angiograms. While a variety of primary tumors can occur in the pancreas ductal adenocarcinoma is by far the most important clinically accounting for c.80% of pancreatic neoplasms. Moreover, cancer of the pancreas presents more frequent and complex diagnostic imaging problems than carcinomas of the biliary tract and will form the focus of this discussion.