Effectiveness of natural oral contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging of the bowel

PurposeThe purpose was to find an oral contrast agent that can be utilized in MRI of the small bowel and fulfill the following criteria: natural, with no or minimal side effects, non-expensive, causes the maximum bowel distension and has the best imaging quality with no artifacts.MethodsFourteen healthy volunteers were included. Each volunteer underwent 3 MRI examinations on different days using 3 different oral contrast materials; water, milk and pineapple juice. Coronal T2WI MRI was done at KAUH Diagnostic Radiology department. Standardized questionnaire was used to study post-MRI abdominal complaint. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS program version 17.0.ResultsAll tested contrast agents could significantly distend the small bowel loops with the p value <0.05. Pineapple juice could distend up to 5 segments in 7 volunteers. Good image quality was depicted in 50% of volunteers using juice, while water showed the worst results where 75% had bad image quality. The highest percentage of image artifacts was found with milk (64.3%).ConclusionPineapple juice has the highest ability of bowel distention and good image quality with insignificant image artifacts and no reported side effects.