Aim: To assess the feasibility of dynamic contrast-enhanced perfusion-MRI in characterization of active small-bowel inflammation and chronic mural fibrosis in patients with Crohn's disease (CD).
Methods: We analyzed a total of 37 (11 women; 23-69 years) patients with known biopsy proven CD, who underwent MR-enterography (MRE) study, performed on a 1.5 T MRI system (Achieva, Philips), using a phased array sense body multicoil, after oral administration of 1.5-2 L of PEG solution. MRE protocol included T1 weighted, SSh T2, sBTFE, and gadolinium-enhanced THRIVE sequences acquired on coronal and axial planes. A dedicated workstation was used to generate perfusion color maps, on which we drown ROI on normal bowel and on pathological segment, thus obtaining related perfusion parameters: relative arterial, venous, and late enhancement (RAE, RVE, and RLE), maximum enhancement (ME), and time to peak (TTP).
Results: Quantitative perfusion analysis showed a good correlation with local degree of Crohn's inflammation activity. Twenty-nine out of 37 patients showed active inflammatory disease (reference standard of active disease: wall bowel thickness and layered enhancement) with following perfusion parameters: REA (%) = 116.1, RVE (%) = 125.3, RLE (%) = 127.1, ME (%) = 1054.7, TTP (sec) = 157. The same parameters calculated in patients with mural fibrosis were as follows: RAE (%): median = 56.4; RVE (%): 81.2; RLE (%): 85.4; ME (%):809.6; TTP (sec): 203.4. A significant difference (p < 0.001) between inflamed and fibrotic bowel wall vascularity, regarding all perfusion parameters evaluated, was found, with higher values in active CD localizations.
Conclusion: Vascular assessment of perfusion kinetics of bowel wall by dynamic contrast perfusion-MR analysis may represent a complementary diagnostic tool that enables a quantitative evaluation of local inflammation activity in CD patients.