Inflammatory bowel disease cross‐sectional imaging: What's new?

Abstract

Cross‐sectional imaging—ultrasonography, computed tomography enterography, and magnetic resonance enterography—is a routine and indispensable tool for patients with Crohn's disease (CD) that helps to detect or monitor disease characteristics before, during, and after CD treatment. New emerging radiological technologies may have further clinical applications in the management of CD. In this review article, we focus on the latest developments in cross‐sectional imaging in CD research, including its role in intra‐ and extra‐luminal lesion detection, intestinal inflammation and fibrosis grading, therapeutic response assessment and outcome prediction, postoperative recurrence detection and prediction, and the gut‐brain axis.

Predicting Treatment Response in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Cross-Sectional Imaging Markers

“…Similarly to MRE, TCE has a high accuracy in IBD diagnosis, being able to early detect mural inflammation, strictures, fistulas, and extra-enteric complications [ 75 ]. As for CD, it shows a specificity ranging from 90% to 100% for colon involvement and from 64% to 100% for small bowel lesions [ 76 ]. Increased BWT, increased wall contrast enhancement, and fat stranding are signs of active disease detectable with CTE as well as MRE, as shown in Figure 5 .…”

Changing paradigms in management of inflammatory bowel disease

“…In addition, cross-sectional imaging modalities are being used as complementary tools to endoscopy, enabling the assessment of transmural lesions and extraluminal complications in IBD. In this field, Wang et al 8 provided an update on cross-sectional imaging advances including magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) and intestinal ultrasound (IUS) for IBD management, including extraluminal lesion detection, evaluation of complications, therapeutic response assessment, and outcome prediction. In addition, Sleiman et al 9 emphasized the novel cross-sectional imaging parameters used for the characterization of stricturing CD, including differentiation between inflammatory, muscular, and fibrotic stricture components.…”

“…In this field, Wang et al. 8 provided an update on cross‐sectional imaging advances including magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) and intestinal ultrasound (IUS) for IBD management, including extra‐luminal lesion detection, evaluation of complications, therapeutic response assessment, and outcome prediction. In addition, Sleiman et al.…”

“… 10 The modalities and impact of the implementation of AI in endoscopy and cross‐sectional imaging modalities on the clinical management of IBD have been already discussed in several invited reviews. 7 , 8 , 9 …”

“…It is expected that IBD management will soon benefit from the advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), which has a powerful ability in information processing and has already revolutionized many areas of medicine 10 . The modalities and impact of the implementation of AI in endoscopy and cross‐sectional imaging modalities on the clinical management of IBD have been already discussed in several invited reviews 7–9 …”