CASE REPORT article
Front. Med.
Sec. Nuclear Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1581760
This article is part of the Research TopicCase Reports in PET Imaging 2024View all 9 articles
Imaging Findings for 2-[18F]Fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose Positron Emission Tomography/Computer Tomography in Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm:Case series and literature review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- 2Imaging Center, Jinan Third People's Hospital, Jinan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) is a rare hematologic malignancy with a poor prognosis. The value of 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography/computer tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT) in BPDCN has not been clarified. This study aimed to investigate the imaging findings of 18F-FDG PET/CT in patients with BPDCN based on cases from our institution and cases from literature. The clinical and radiological data were obtained from 5 patients with BPDCN from our institution between March 2014 and July 2023. And we complemented our dataset with 13 cases derived from the studies published in English to ascertain the potential efficacy of 18F-FDG PET/CT scan in identifying this malignancy. Information collected included age, sex, extent of lesion involvement, biopsy site, karyotype, immunophenotype, treatment and prognosis, and 18F-FDG PET/CT features. A total of 18 cases of BPDCN featuring PET/CT manifestations were assessed. We observed considerably increased 18F-FDG uptake in lesions of all 18 cases [maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), 9.1; range, 1.5-9.1]. The positive finding of 18F-FDG PET/CT mainly included skin (11/18), lymph nodes (9/18), bone (4/18), and spleen (2/18). Except for these organs, definitely abnormal 18F-FDG uptake lesions were detected in the lung and breast. The roles of 18F-FDG PET/CT in our study were initial staging (18/18), selection of biopsy site (5/18), and treatment evaluation (7/18). Prognostic data were available in 16 patients. The median OS in this cohort was 12.0 months, the median follow-up time was 10.0 months. Among these, 10 cases reported SUVmax of lesions at the same time. Interestingly, 5 cases out of 8 patients with SUVmax >2.5 died within 2 months of diagnosis, whereas 2 other cases with SUVmax < 2.5 survived within 10 and 34 months of follow-up time.The data from our case series and those from the literature demonstrated the potential utility of 18F-FDG PET/CT in diagnosis, staging, prognosis, and treatment follow-up of BPDCN. Early identification of this rare malignancy on imaging can expedite diagnosis and facilitate early treatment.
Keywords: blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm, 18F-FDG PET/CT, Hematologic malignancy, Imaging manifestations, prognosis
Received: 06 May 2025; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Li, Xin, Yuan, Zhou and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xin Li, Qilu Hospital, Shandong University, Jinan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.