Direct visualization of pancreatic juice flow using unenhanced MRI with spin labeling can be aid in diagnosing chronic pancreatitis.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study is to prospectively assess whether direct visualization of pancreatic juice flow using an unenhanced MRI technique with spin labeling can aid in the diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis.


METHODS
Ten healthy volunteers and 50 patients who were categorized as having no chronic pancreatitis (n = 11), early chronic pancreatitis (n = 7), or established chronic pancreatitis (n = 32) underwent MRI, including direct pancreatic juice visualization using a flow-out technique with a time-spatial labeling inversion pulse, comprising a nonselective inversion recovery pulse immediately followed by a spatially selective inversion labeling pulse. The mean velocities and volumes of pancreatic juice excretion were also obtained. Variance tests were used to evaluate the clinical groups with respect to the appearance rate and mean velocity; the Kruskal-Wallis test was used for volume.


RESULTS
There were no significant differences between healthy volunteers and patients with no chronic pancreatitis. The appearance rate, mean velocity, and volume of pancreatic juice excretion tended to decrease with the degree of chronic pancreatitis. Although the difference in these values was statistically significant between the healthy group and the established chronic pancreatitis group, the values of the early group and other groups were not statistically significant. There was a significant correlation between the appearance rate of pancreatic juice and the clinical groups (τ = -0.4376, p = 0.0015).


CONCLUSIONS
The measurement of directly visualized pancreatic juice flow may aid in establishing the diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis.
1 Department of Radiology, Sendai City Medical Center, 5-22-1, Tsurugaya, Miyagino-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 983-0824, Japan.
Reiji
R
Sugita
Akemi
A
Furuta
Tetsuro
T
Yamazaki
Kei
K
Itoh
Naotaka
N
Fujita
Shoki
S
Takahashi
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010189:Pancreatic Juice; D050500:Pancreatitis, Chronic / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D013113:Spin Labels
D013113:Spin Labels