摘要Background Several previous studies have shown that diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) can provide additional information for focal pancreatic lesions by demonstrating more restricted diffusion in solid malignant tumors than in chronic pancreatitis,which can be indicated by a decreased apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC).However,these studies have a modest sample size and convey inconclusive results.The aim of this study was to determine,in a meta-analysis,the diagnostic performance of quantitative diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging in distinguishing pancreatic carcinoma from mass-forming chronic pancreatitis.Methods We determined the sensitivities and specificities across studies.A summary receiver operator characteristic (sROC) curve was constructed to calculate the area under the curve (AUC).Results The pooled sensitivity of DWI was 0.86 (95％ CI:0.80-0.91) and the pooled specificity was 0.82 (95％ CI:0.72-0.89).The AUC of the sROC was 0.91 (95％ CI:0.88-0.93).Conclusions DWI may be a potentially technically feasible tool for differentiating pancreatic carcinoma from massforming chronic pancreatitis.However,large-scale randomized control trials are necessary to assess its clinical value.