Inflammatory activity in Crohn's disease: CE-US

Abstract

The evaluation of inflammatory activity in Crohn's disease (CD), a crucial aspect of treatment planning and monitoring, is currently based on a sum of clinical data and imaging findings. Among the contrast enhanced cross-sectional imaging techniques (CE-US, CE-CT, CE-MR), CE-US is less invasive, more comfortable for the patient, and has significant diagnostic accuracy. In addition, it is a portable, easily repeatable, well tolerated, and ionizing radiation-free imaging modality. CE-US has been introduced as effective method in the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of CD inflammatory activity. CE-US might help in characterizing bowel-wall thickening by differentiating inflammatory neovascularisation, edema, and fibrosis. The recent chance to evaluate the bowel-wall stiffness by US elastography imaging could allow further assessment of fibrosis that characterizes the evolution of the inflammatory activity.