Diffusion-Weighted MRI in Perianal Abscess: Role and Comparison With Contrast-Enhanced MRI

Perianal abscess is a clinical infective and/or inflammatory collection in the perianal region, one entity of a large group of anal and perianal disorders. Perianal abscesses are often seen as a complication of grade 2 and grade 4 perianal fistulas from St. James's University Hospital classification. Several imaging modalities have been tried in the past for adequate assessment of perianal abscess with contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (CE-MRI) providing the most accurate results. Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is an emerging sequence that can provide comparable results to CE-MRI in diagnosing and characterizing perianal abscess. The main objective of this study is to assess the role of DWI in adequate identification and assessment of perianal abscess and compare the final results with contrast-enhanced images.

Twenty patients with complicated perianal fistula with clinically suspected perianal abscess were evaluated with DWI and CE-MRI. This study was a comparative cross-sectional study conducted in the Department of Radiodiagnosis and Imaging, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal, India. Chi-square test was done to find the association between categorical variables. Kappa test was used to find the agreement between two different tests. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis was done to estimate the area under the curve in predicting the outcome. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy were used to measure the validity of the tests.

DWI is a very sensitive MRI sequence and is equivalent to CE-MRI to detect the location and analyzing the loco-regional extent of abscess in complicated perianal fistula cases. DWI is also very sensitive and superior to T2 short tau inversion recovery (STIR) in differentiating perianal abscess from perianal inflammation without abscess.

DWI can be used as an alternative to post-contrast fat-suppressed MRI in precisely defining the location and extent of anal and perianal abscesses and disease activity in complicated fistula cases.