Abstract #0841

Kuehle C, Goehde S, Kinner S, Nuefer M, Barkhausen J, Lauenstein T

We evaluated the effect of different patient characteristics such as age and body mass index on the image quality of MR colonography (MRC) in conjunction with fecal tagging. 397 asymptomatic patients were included, who ingested a barium-based tagging agent prior to the MRC. The degree of stool tagging was assessed visually on a segmental basis. In 95% of the segments fecal material was sufficiently tagged while in 5% visible stool strongly impeded image analysis. However, no correlation was found between the success rate of tagging and patients` characteristics.