[MRI in chronic inflammatory bowel disease]

Chronic inflammatory bowel disease is diagnosed and monitored by the combination of colonoscopy and small bowel enteroklysis. Magnetic resonance imaging has become the gold standard for the imaging of perirectal and pelvic fistulas. With the advent of ultrafast MRI small and large bowel imaging has become highly attractive and is being advocated more and more in the diagnostic work up of inflammatory bowel disease. Imaging protocols include fast T1-weighted gradient echo and T2-weighted TSE sequences and oral or rectal bowel distension. Furthermore, dedicated imaging protocols are based on breath-hold imaging under pharmacological bowel paralysis and gastrointestinal MR contrast agents (Hydro-MRI). High diagnostic accuracy can be achieved in Crohn's disease with special reference to the pattern of disease, depth of inflammation, mesenteric reaction, sinus tract depiction and formation of abscess. In ulcerative colitis, the mucosa-related inflammation causes significantly less bowel wall thickening compared to Crohn's disease. Therefore with MRI, the extent of inflammatory changes is always underestimated compared to colonoscopy. According to our experience in more than 200 patients as well as the results in other centers, Hydro-MRI possesses the potential to replace enteroklysis in the diagnosis of chronic inflammatory bowel disease and most of the follow-up colonoscopies in Crohn's disease. Further technical improvements in 3D imaging will allow interactive postprocessing of the MR data.