Kirsi Härmä

Diffusion weighted MRI (DW-MRI) was emerging strongly during the past decade in female pelvic imaging, including gynecologic cancer. In not only distinguishing and detecting tumors and metastatic sites, but also serving as biologic marker with usable parameters predicting therapy response and risk of recurrence. From this point of view, DW-MRI is able to guide the choice of patient management directly influencing patient outcome. Further, pregnant women benefit from the DW-MRI as it offers a sensitive staging tool without use of contrast media and ionizing radiation. Radiologists should be active in communicating the evolving possibilities of DWI among the referring colleagues.

Keith Wan-Hang Chiu

Magnetic Resonance Enterography (MRE) is routinely used in the diagnosis and assessment of small bowel and colon in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Diffusion restricted imaging (DWI) plays an important role in complementing conventional sequences and is very sensitive in detecting bowel wall inflammation. However, it intrinsically lacks anatomical details, can be non-specific and susceptible to artifacts, such as breathing, peristalsis, distortion, aliasing and T2 shine-through. Thus, evaluation of DWI images requires close correlation with T2W and contrast-enhanced sequences. Good understanding of the IBD disease spectrum is also necessary in order to interpret these images accurately.