Current tecniques and new perpectives research of magnetic resonance enterography in pediatric Crohn’s disease

Abstract

Crohn’s disease affects more than 500000 individuals in the United States, and about 25% of cases are diagnosed during the pediatric period. Imaging of the bowel has undergone dramatic changes in the past two decades. The endoscopy with biopsy is generally considered the diagnostic reference standard, this combination can evaluates only the mucosa, not inflammation or fibrosis in the mucosa. Actually, the only modalities that can visualize submucosal tissues throughout the small bowel are the computed tomography (CT) enterography (CTE) with the magnetic resonance enterography (MRE). CT generally is highly utilized, but there is growing concern over ionizing radiation and cancer risk; it is a very important aspect to keep in consideration in pediatric patients. In contrast to CTE, MRE does not subject patients to ionizing radiation and can be used to detect detailed morphologic information and functional data of bowel disease, to monitor the effects of medical therapy more accurately, to detect residual active disease even in patients showing apparent clinical resolution and to guide treatment more accurately.

Keywords: Magnetic resonance imaging; Imaging; Pediatric; Enterography; Crohn’s disease

Core tip: Magnetic resonance enterography is an effective imaging modality to diagnosis, evaluating and follow-up of Crohn’s disease (CD) in pediatric patient and novel magnetic resonance imaging application, such as motility studies, spectroscopy, diffusion weighted imaging, molecular and hybrid imaging are extremely interesting and might contribute to diagnosis and managment of CD.