Magnetization Transfer MR Imaging for Predicting Intestinal Fistula in Patients with Crohn Disease / 中山大学学报(医学科学版)

ABSTRACT

@#【Objective】To evaluate the feasibility of magnetization transfer（MT）magnetic resonance（MR）imaging for predicting the risk of intestinal fistula in patients with Crohn disease （CD）. 【Methods】 The study prospectively enrolled 12 consecutive patients with CD and abdominal MT imaging were performed before elective surgery. The bowel wall MT ratio normalized to skeletal muscle was calculated；region- by- region correlations with the surgical specimen were performed. Histopathologic evaluation of fibrosis was executed by using Masson trichrome. Wilcoxon rank test ， Spearman rank correlation， and receiver operating characteristic curve （ROC） were used for statistical analysis.【Results】Among 15 surgical intestinal segments from 12 patients，5 lesions were found with intestinal fistula and of them 12 bowel specimens were obtained. The other 10 intestinal segments were without complications and 23 bowel specimens were enrolled. The intestinal fistula bowel showed a significant higher （P=0.045） normalized MT ratio. ROC analysis revealed an area under the curve of 0.674（95%CI：0.537-0.811）for differentiating intestinal fistula bowel from the non- fistula one. The sensitivity，specificity was 93.3% and 51.1% with a cut-off value of 76.8%，respectively. For the Masson score，significant difference（P=0.012）was found between the complicated intestinal specimens and the non-complicated ones. Additionally， the normalized MT ration was statistical correlated with Masson score （r=0.708，P<0.001）.【Conclusion】MT imaging could be a potential method to predict the risk of intestinal fistula in patients with CD.