Yang JY, Wu SS. Imaging monitoring contributes to the “treat-to-target” strategy in the management of Crohn’s disease. World J Gastroenterol 2025; 31(40): 111775 [DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i40.111775]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Jia-Yi Yang, Department of Radiology, Wuxi People’s Hospital, Wuxi Medical Center, Nanjing Medical University, No. 299 Qingyang Road, Wuxi 214023, Jiangsu Province, China. yangjy2150@163.com
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Gastroenterology & Hepatology
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Letter to the Editor
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This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Oct 28, 2025 (publication date) through Oct 30, 2025
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World Journal of Gastroenterology
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1007-9327
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Yang JY, Wu SS. Imaging monitoring contributes to the “treat-to-target” strategy in the management of Crohn’s disease. World J Gastroenterol 2025; 31(40): 111775 [DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i40.111775]
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 28, 2025; 31(40): 111775 Published online Oct 28, 2025. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i40.111775
Imaging monitoring contributes to the “treat-to-target” strategy in the management of Crohn’s disease
Jia-Yi Yang, Shan-Shan Wu
Jia-Yi Yang, Department of Radiology, Wuxi People’s Hospital, Wuxi Medical Center, Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi 214023, Jiangsu Province, China
Shan-Shan Wu, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, The General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu 610083, Sichuan Province, China
Co-first authors: Jia-Yi Yang and Shan-Shan Wu.
Author contributions: Yang JY wrote the letter; Yang JY and Wu SS collected the literatures, and made equal contributions as co-first authors; both authors have read and approved the final version to be published.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jia-Yi Yang, Department of Radiology, Wuxi People’s Hospital, Wuxi Medical Center, Nanjing Medical University, No. 299 Qingyang Road, Wuxi 214023, Jiangsu Province, China. yangjy2150@163.com
Received: July 9, 2025 Revised: August 4, 2025 Accepted: September 24, 2025 Published online: October 28, 2025 Processing time: 110 Days and 18 Hours
Abstract
Crohn’s disease (CD) manifests as a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract, featuring progressive and destructive full-thickness intestinal lesions that frequently result in irreversible structural damage. In recent decades, the treatment target for patients with CD has evolved from controlling symptoms to achieving sustained deep remission. While ileocolonoscopy remains the reference standard for the diagnosis and assessment of mucosal healing, cross-sectional imaging techniques, including magnetic resonance enterography, computed tomography enterography, and bowel ultrasound, provide comprehensive visualization of the small bowel, enabling evaluation of transmural inflammation and extraintestinal manifestations. Compared with endoscopic mucosal healing alone, transmural healing, assessed via these imaging modalities, is associated with superior long-term outcomes and has emerged as a pivotal treatment target in CD. Additionally, radiomics analysis based on cross-sectional imaging data offers a promising approach for capturing hidden biological signatures of disease phenotypes. This approach can be used to enhance diagnostic performance, monitor disease activity, and predict prognosis, ultimately facilitating more personalized medicine for CD patients.
Core Tip: Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic relapsing inflammatory bowel disorder characterized by transmural inflammation. Mucosal healing assessed by endoscopy remains the gold standard criterion for determining the therapeutic endpoint. However, transmural healing, evaluated via cross-sectional imaging techniques, is associated with superior long-term outcomes compared with mucosal healing and has consequently been proposed as a more suitable treatment goal in CD. Recent advances in radiomics can be used to extract hidden biological signatures from cross-sectional imaging and offer novel approaches for the diagnosis, monitoring, and prognostic assessment of CD, thereby offering patients more personalized medicine.
