Evaluation of gastrointestinal motility with MRI: Advances, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of gastrointestinal motility has developed rapidly over the past few years. The non-invasive and non-ionizing character of MRI is an important advantage together with the fact that it is fast and can visualize the entire gastrointestinal tract. Advances in imaging and quantification techniques have facilitated assessment of gastric, small intestinal, and colonic motility in a clinical setting. Dynamic MRI is used in the stomach to measure frequency and amplitude of antral contractions. [3][4][5] It is used for the small bowel to look at segmental and global motility using frequency measures and surrogate measures. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] In the colon it has been applied to assess motion and velocity of contents, wall motion and to study motility using surrogate measures. 13-17 So far there has been a paucity of validation studies. To our knowledge there is only one study in which dynamic MRI findings were compared to manometry, demonstrating 100% correlation between visualized colonic movements and intraluminal pressure changes. 17 The clinical value of dynamic MRI is under evaluation for pathologies like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction (CIPO) and constipation. they quantified small bowel motility using dynamic MRI. 18 In this review we discuss the challenges and opportunities in evaluating gastrointestinal motility with dynamic MRI. The first part of this review summarizes the technical aspects of the dynamic MRI technique; the second part discusses the observations made by applying the described

Assessment of fasted and fed gastrointestinal contraction frequencies in healthy subjects using continuously tagged MRI

“…This is an invasive technique, and it is only available in specialized centers. [4][5][6] Recently, a tagged MRI sequence was presented for motility assessment during free breathing. 2,3 Since detection and quantification of motility can aid in diagnosis and patient management, the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly explored for this purpose as developments in MRI techniques have made the technology more powerful whilst retaining its noninvasive and patient-friendly character.…”

“…2,3 Since detection and quantification of motility can aid in diagnosis and patient management, the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly explored for this purpose as developments in MRI techniques have made the technology more powerful whilst retaining its noninvasive and patient-friendly character. [4][5][6] Recently, a tagged MRI sequence was presented for motility assessment during free breathing. 7,8 This motion encoding technique, also referred to as SPAMM (spatial modulation of magnetization), 9 can be used to quantify bowel motion patterns in the frequency domain.…”

Detecting the effects of a standardized meal challenge on small bowel motility with MRI in prepared and unprepared bowel

“…Increasingly, MRI has been used as a methodology in research to evaluate contractility within the small bowel . MRI is non‐invasive, safe and widely available and, coupled with advances in post‐processing technologies, enables rapid and repeatable quantification .…”

“…1 Increasingly, MRI has been used as a methodology in research to evaluate contractility within the small bowel. 1,2 MRI is non-invasive, safe and widely available and, coupled with advances in post-processing technologies, enables rapid and repeatable quantification. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Encouragingly, the first steps toward clinical implementation have been taken with dynamic motility imaging now being routine in various centers and with several prospective clinical studies being published.…”

Untitled

“…Dynamic MRI has been used to measure the frequency and amplitude of antral contractions in previous work [19,20]. De Zwart et al compared the use of MRI and the barostat to evaluate gastric motility and emptying disorders [24].…”