Imaging diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease

The term "chronic inflammatory bowel disease" represents a spectrum of diseases out of which ulcerous colitis and Crohn's disease are the far most common. Large bowel enemas have lost their relevance compared to colonoscopy over the past years and small bowel enteroclysis has also been widely replaced by CT- and especially MR-enteroclysis meanwhile. The diagnostic value of computed tomography and MR-tomography in chronic inflammatory bowel disease is based on the excellent visualization and documentation of extent and severity of bowel wall inflammation, estimation of inflammatory activity of the disease and of detection of potential extraintestinal complications and/or additional diagnoses by these two methods. Nevertheless, conventional radiological techniques as well as sonography may still be valuable under certain conditions. Furthermore, nowadays imaging of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases includes also White Blood Cell scintigraphy as well as Positrone Emission Tomography which provide informations about extent and especially activity of the disease. The presented article provides an overview of the possibilities and limitations of the available imaging modalities in inflammatory bowel diseases and helps the reader to decide under what conditions which one of the available examinations should be regarded as the most appropriate and promising one.