| [ Summary ] |
Inflammation associated with Crohn's disease (CD) involves the entire gastrointestinal tract, especially the small and large bowels and causes irreversible bowel damage. Frequent imaging examinations are necessary to monitor disease activity and to evaluate response to therapeutic interventions, as well as predicting recurrence in order to provide appropriate treatment. Suitable imaging modalities should be reproducible, well tolerated, safe, and free of ionizing radiation. In recent years, imaging used for CD has dramatically changed. Cross-sectional imaging techniques such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are used to investigate not only extraluminal abnormalities but also intraluminal changes. Recently, new techniques such as MR enteroclysis, enterography, colonography, and enterocolonography have been developed. These recent advances enable us to use MRI to assess bowel disorders with high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. MRI can be used to simultaneously evaluate the bowel surface, bowel wall, abdominal abscesses and perianal lesions such as perianal fistulae and perianal abscesses without experiencing problems with overlapping bowel loops. Therefore, MRI has the potential to provide evaluation of overall CD disease activity without radiation exposure. We believe that MRI is a suitable first choice of imaging modality for the assessment of CD. |