Global small bowel motility: assessment with dynamic MR imaging.

Area of Science:

• Gastroenterology
• Medical Imaging
• Pharmacology

Background:

• Assessing small bowel motility is crucial for diagnosing gastrointestinal disorders.
• Current methods for quantifying motility can be invasive or lack precision.
• Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging offers a non-invasive approach to visualize and quantify gastrointestinal function.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the repeatability of software-quantified small bowel motility using MR imaging in healthy volunteers.
• To determine the sensitivity of this MR imaging technique in detecting pharmacologically induced changes in small bowel motility.

Main Methods:

• Twenty-one healthy volunteers underwent cine MR imaging to capture small bowel motility.
• A randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled crossover study was conducted using neostigmine or butylscopolamine.
• Motility was quantified using a registration algorithm, and repeatability was assessed using Bland-Altman analysis and coefficient of variation.

Main Results:

• The MR imaging quantification of small bowel motility demonstrated high repeatability (within-subject coefficient of variation of 4.9%).
• Neostigmine significantly increased small bowel motility compared to placebo (0.39 au vs. 0.34 au, P < .001).
• Butylscopolamine significantly decreased small bowel motility compared to placebo (0.13 au vs. 0.30 au, P < .001).

Conclusions:

• Software-quantified MR imaging provides a repeatable method for assessing small bowel motility in humans.
• This technique is sensitive to pharmacologic manipulations, suggesting its utility in clinical research and diagnostics.