MRI Derived Small Bowel Motility as a Marker of Crohns Disease Activity

Alex Menys¹, Freddy Odille², Shonit Punwani, Marco Novelli³, Manuel Rodriguez-Justo³, Steve Halligan, David Atkinson, Stuart Taylor

Optimal medical management of Crohns disease (CD) relies on accurate identification of patients with acute inflammation. Currently a number of anatomical features seen on MR enterography have been shown to correlate closely with disease activity. Abnormal intestinal motility has been described in CD and may also be a marker for disease activity. We explored quantitatively the relationship between CD activity and intestinal motility assessed using MRI (n=23) against a histopathological standard of reference and validated anatomical MRI markers of activity. We found significant relationships between motility and both end points suggesting motility as a biomarker for inflammatory activity.