Keywords:
GI Tract, Gastrointestinal tract, Small bowel, MR, MR-Diffusion/Perfusion, MR-Enterography, Imaging sequences, Inflammation, Prospective, Diagnostic or prognostic study, Performed at one institution
Authors:
I. Apine, R. Pitura, I. Pukite, G. Krumina; Riga/LV
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2020/C-05965
Purpose
Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) plays an invaluable role in diagnosing Crohn's disease as it has shown a potential to replace contrast medium administration and provides a quantitative index - apparent diffusion coefficient ADC, to characterise the inflammation [1]. There is a number of DWI techniques that differ in fat suppression type applied. In our institution, SPIR- and STIR- based DWI weighted sequences are used. STIR-based DWI sequence, or DWIBS (Diffusion-Weighted Imaging with Background Body Signal Suppresion), has several advantages over conventional SPIR-based DWI sequence as it is a free-breathing sequence permitting multiple signal acqusitions to average motions [2], it provides more uniform fat suppression, highest contrast-to-noise ration, better detection of subtle lesions, as well as less image distortion [3]. In practice, comparing to the conventional DWI image (Fig. 1) DWIBS images (Fig. 2) are visually sharper, with more clearly differentiated contours of structures, thus potentially having advantages also in assessment of Crohn's disease.
The purpose of our study was to assess utility of ADC of DWIBS comparing to ADC of the conventional, SPIR-based DWI to be used in assessment of inflammatory activity in adults and children with active Crohn’s disease in the terminal ileum.