The Journal of Practical Medicine >

2025 , Vol. 41 >Issue 15: 2398 - 2405

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1006-5725.2025.15.016

Medical Examination and Clinical Diagnosis

Multimodal MRI⁃based neurophenotype correlated to structural bowel damage in Crohn′s disease

  • Zhuangnian FANG ,
  • Ruonan ZHANG ,
  • Lili HUANG ,
  • Xiaodi SHEN ,
  • Qingzhu ZHENG ,
  • Yangdi WANG ,
  • Xuehua LI ,
  • Zhoulei LI ,
  • Shaochun LIN
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  • Department of Radiology，the First Affiliated Hospital，Sun Yat?Sen University，Guangzhou 510080，Guangdong，China

Received date: 2025-04-03

  Online published: 2025-08-11

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Abstract

Objective To characterize neurological alterations associated with structural bowel damage in patients with Crohn′s disease （CD） through radiomics-assisted neurophenotyping， utilizing multiparametric brain MRI. Methods This prospective study enrolled patients with CD who underwent brain MRI， MR enterography， and ileocolonoscopy within one week. The Lémann Index was used to quantitatively assess cumulative structural bowel damage. CD patients were stratified into two groups based on a cutoff value of 4.8： those with bowel damage （LI > 4.8） and those without bowel damage （LI ≤ 4.8）. A neurophenotype model was developed to characterize the neural changes associated with bowel damage in CD. Key features were selected from first-order features extracted from multiparametric brain MRI in the training cohort and validated in an independent test cohort. Results The final study population comprised 109 patients， including 51 individuals with bowel damage and 58 without bowel damage. The neurophenotype model scores were 0.785 （95%CI： 0.506 ~ 0.945） in the bowel damage group and 0.155 （95%CI： 0.093 ~ 0.394） in the non-bowel damage group， showing a statistically significant difference between the two groups （P < 0.001）. The developed model exhibited strong discriminative performance， with area under the receiver operating characteristic curve （AUC） values ranging from 0.824 to 0.918 across the training， validation， and test cohorts （all P < 0.05）. Conclusion Our radiomics-assisted neurophenotype analysis reveals neural alterations in CD patients with bowel damage， which may indicate extraintestinal manifestations associated with cumulative intestinal injury.

Key words： Crohn′s disease; brain-gut axis; bowel damage; Lémann index

Cite this article

Zhuangnian FANG , Ruonan ZHANG , Lili HUANG , Xiaodi SHEN , Qingzhu ZHENG , Yangdi WANG , Xuehua LI , Zhoulei LI , Shaochun LIN . Multimodal MRI⁃based neurophenotype correlated to structural bowel damage in Crohn′s disease[J]. The Journal of Practical Medicine, 2025 , 41(15) : 2398 -2405 . DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1006-5725.2025.15.016

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