The Utility of MR Imaging Using the HASTE and True FISP Sequences in Diagnosing Bowel Obstruction

ous abdominal diseases (1, 2), but its use for the evaluation of gastrointestinal disease has been slow to develop because of long acquisition times (resulting in increased motion artifacts, mostly from either respiration or peristalsis) and the unavailability of good MR contrast agents for the gastrointestinal tube (3, 4). As a result, only a small number of published studies have focused on the appearance of intestinal disease processes evaluated by MRI and there have been few reports concerning bowel obstruction (5-8). Several recent reports have described the use of fast MRI in small bowel disease, including small bowel obstruction (9-11). In this study, we investigated bowel obstruction using HASTE and true FISP sequences. Our purpose was to evaluate the efficacy of MRI using HASTE and true FISP sequences in demonstrating bowel obstruction, in identifying the sites involved, and in determining the cause of obstruction. J Korean Radiol Soc 2003;48:485-492