An fNIRS Dataset for Cognitive Decoding during a Multi-day Block-design Stroop Task.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related death and is projected to become the second by 2030. Prognosis remains poor, with median survival of approximately four months and a five-year relative survival of approximately 13% in developed countries. Most patients are diagnosed with advanced disease, which limits the potential for curative treatment. Early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer remains challenging because the disease is frequently asymptomatic in its early stages, and symptoms that do occur are often non-specific. Current diagnostic pathways are therefore largely symptom-driven, with pancreatic cancer often only suspected after patients develop clinical features such as abdominal pain, weight loss, jaundice, or new-onset diabetes that prompt further assessment. As a result, these pathways have limited capacity to detect early invasive cancers or high-risk precursor lesions, such as pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia, before disease progression occurs. Consequently, more than 80% of patients present with unresectable or metastatic disease at diagnosis. Survival is substantially higher when pancreatic cancer is detected at an early stage, particularly when disease remains localised and amenable to surgical resection. Five-year survival exceeds 80% for stage IA disease but remains less than 3% for metastatic disease. Population-wide screening for pancreatic cancer is not currently feasible. The lifetime risk of pancreatic cancer in the general population is approximately 1.5%, which limits the positive predictive value of available screening tests and would result in large numbers of false-positive findings, procedural risks, and substantial healthcare costs. Early detection efforts have therefore focused on surveillance of individuals with substantially elevated risk, particularly carriers of pathogenic germline variants and individuals with strong family histories of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer surveillance programs are typically delivered within specialised centres and incorporate structured imaging protocols, multidisciplinary clinical review, and genetic risk assessment to detect early-stage cancers or high-risk precursor lesions.