Role of diffusion weighted MRI in imaging of Panceatic masses

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most fatal cancers. Stage of the disease greatly affects the prognosis of the disease that makes early diagnosis crucial in the management process. Conventional MRI is the routine protocol; however contrast administration is time consuming in addition to the adverse effects of contrast. Also many cancer patients have already impaired renal functions. With development of high field magnets and great advances in functional MRI, DWI is increasingly used in the detection and characterization of abdominal tumors. DW MRI in the pancreas is a simple and non-invasive imaging technique with no need to use contrast media. It provides information that reflects tissue cellularity which can be used in detection of tumor aggressiveness and response to treatment. In our study using combined qualitative analysis of DWIs and quantitative analysis of ADC values we concluded that results of DW MRI are promising in the characterization of various pancreatic lesions and identification of pancreatic neoplasms which gives essential information for the clinician that reflects disease prognosis and treatment strategies. However, in view of limited number of cases and other limitations of the study larger studies are needed to confirm these results. We recommend using