COMMENTARY

Virtual colonography

The virtuosity of virtuality or how real is virtual colonography

H Herfarth¹ and A G Schreyer²

¹ Department of Internal Medicine I, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
² Department of Radiology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr H Herfarth
Klinik und Poliklinik für Innere Medizin I, Klinikum der Universität Regensburg, 93042 Regensburg, Germany; hans.herfarth@klinik.uni-regensburg.de

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Virtual colonoscopy can be considered as work in progress and may be the state of the art technique for a non-invasive and perhaps even pleasant colonoscopy in the future

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Keywords: colorectal masses; conventional colonoscopy; inflammatory bowel disease; magnetic resonance imaging; virtual colonoscopy

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The term "virtual colonoscopy" was initially coined by Vinig et al in 1994 who demonstrated the feasibility of creating three dimensional pictures of the colon using spiral computed tomography (CT) technology.¹ Since the term "virtual colonoscopy" is misleading and implies a colonoscopic procedure rather than generation of images, this methodology should be referred to as virtual colonography (VC). VC can be performed using CT or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In this issue of Gut, Ajaj and colleagues² present an evaluation of a new MR colonography technique employing a water enema for contrasting and extending the colon [see page 1738]. The so called "dark lumen" technique, which was first published in a small feasibility study³ and further described in a recently published review by the same group,⁴ offers the advantage that the lumen of the colon is pictured black whereas the colonic wall as well as . . . [Full text of this article]

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