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Magnetic Resonance Enterography

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Endoscopy in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

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Abstract

MR enterography has become one of the main imaging tools for evaluation of inflammatory bowel disease. This cross-sectional imaging modality allows assessment of the entire small bowel and of the extraintestinal complications in patients with Crohn’s disease. MR enterography has the advantage of being a non-ionizing radiation imaging tool compared to small bowel follow through, CT enterography and enteroclysis. It allows evaluation of bowel wall thickening and edema, bowel wall enhancement and ulcerations, which all indicate disease activity. Although endoscopy with biopsy remains the gold standard for assessing mucosal disease activity, MR enterography provides additional information about the entire bowel wall and depicts extraintestinal findings such as fistulas and abscesses. MR enterography is a suitable tool for documenting the presence of disease and for evaluating the response to therapy. It has potential to become the standard tool for serial assessment of bowel damage over time. Recent quantitative imaging techniques, such as diffusion-weighted imaging, motility imaging and magnetization transfer imaging are promising and could improve the assessment of disease activity, severity and response to therapy.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Ragna Vanslembrouck MD & Dirk Vanbeckevoort MD

  2. Joint Department of Medical Imaging, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Tanya P. Chawla MRCP, FRCR, FRCP(C)

  3. Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Gert Van Assche MD, PhD

  4. Department of Gastroenterology, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Gert Van Assche MD, PhD

Authors
  1. Ragna Vanslembrouck MD
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  2. Dirk Vanbeckevoort MD
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  3. Tanya P. Chawla MRCP, FRCR, FRCP(C)
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  4. Gert Van Assche MD, PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ragna Vanslembrouck MD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Digestive Disease Institute, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Richard Kozarek

  2. Digestive Disease Institute, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Michael Chiorean

  3. Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, USA

    Michael Wallace

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Vanslembrouck, R., Vanbeckevoort, D., Chawla, T.P., Van Assche, G. (2015). Magnetic Resonance Enterography. In: Kozarek, R., Chiorean, M., Wallace, M. (eds) Endoscopy in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11077-6_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11077-6_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-11076-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11077-6

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