REVIEW  PET/CT IMAGING IN AUTOIMMUNE DISORDERS 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2022 September;66(3):206-17

DOI: 10.23736/S1824-4785.22.03467-7

Copyright © 2022 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

The role of PET imaging in inflammatory bowel diseases: state-of-the-art review

Pierre LOVINFOSSE ^{1, 2} ✉, Roland HUSTINX ^{1, 2}

¹ Division of Nuclear Medicine and Oncological Imaging, University Hospital CHU of Liège, Liège, Belgium; ² GIGA-CRC in vivo Imaging, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), i.e. Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis, are autoimmune processes of undetermined origin characterized by the chronic inflammation of the digestive tract. There is no single gold-standard to diagnose IBD which is therefore carried out through the combination of endoscopy, biopsy, radiological and biological investigations; and the development of non-invasive technique allowing the assessment and monitoring of these diseases is necessary. In this state-of-the-art review of the literature, we present the results of PET imaging studies for the diagnosis and staging of IBD (suspected or known), response evaluation to treatment and evaluation of one the main complication, i.e. strictures; explain the reasons why this examination is currently not considered in the IBD guidelines, e.g. radiation exposure, lack of standardization and not validated performances; and finally discuss the perspectives that could possibly allow it to find a place in the future, e.g. digital PET-CT, dynamic PET images acquisition, new radiopharmaceuticals, use of radiomics and use of artificial intelligence for automatically characterize and quantify digestive [¹⁸F]FDG uptake.

KEY WORDS: Positron-emission tomography; Inflammatory bowel diseases; Crohn disease; Colitis, Ulcerative