Aim: To investigate and characterize the effect of age on apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values in the normal adult pancreas using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI).
Materials and methods: Five hundred and fifty-nine adult patients without pancreatic disease, ranging from 20-81 years of age (mean 50.9 years; 436 men, 123 women), were included in this study. Breath-hold single-shot echo-planar DWI (b-values = 0, 500 s/mm(2)) was employed to determine the ADCs across all patients. Dependency of ADCs on age was characterized using a Spearman rank-order correlation test.
Results: Across the age spectrum, there was no significant correlation between ADC and age (p = 0.409).
Conclusion: The findings of the present study suggest that the effect of age on ADCs can be excluded from the diagnosis of pancreatic diseases and design of future studies using breath-hold single-shot DWI and ADCs (as calculated with b-values of 0 and 500 s/mm(2)).
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