Cross-sectional imaging of the bowel

A variety of disorders are seen in the gastrointestinal tracts. Since symptoms of the most conditions are non-specific imaging examinations play an important role for the correct diagnosis in this clinical setting. Particularly, emergent conditions such as perforation, bowel ischemia and hemorrhage, require early diagnosis for timely and appropriate management. First line examinations are either gastro-duodenoscopy or colonoscopy depending on the suspected site, however, most part of the small bowel is the beyond the scope and endoscopic examinations without preparations in emergrnt patients are limited in the accuracy. Moreover, lesions extended deep into the bowel wall or extraintestine to the peritoneal cavity, retroperitoneum are not visualized with endoscopy. Crosscectional imaging such as CT and MRI provides useful information that is not obtained by the endoscopy and they are complementary in the diagnosis of bowel disease. In this article, cross sectional imaging of the bowel is demonstrated mainly focusedvon CT examination in acute abdominal conditions. A new approach in functional assessment of the bowel contraction using MRI is introduced.