Abstract
Objective:
To preliminarily evaluate the feasibility and usefulness of MR elastography of the liver at 3 T with cine-tagging and bending energy (BE) analysis for the evaluation of hepatic fibrosis.
Materials and Methods:
Twenty-two patients underwent MR elastography with four different cine-tagging grids on the liver (16- or 20-mm sagittal or coronal). Nine images serially obtained during 1-s of exhalation were analyzed to define coordinates of grid intersections. BE values were calculated using the thin-plate spline method. BE values were compared among patient groups with different fibrosis stage thresholds.
Results:
In the 22 patients, six had a fibrosis score of F0, one had F1, seven had F2, three had F3, and five had F4. Mean BE value with 16-mm sagittal grid was greater with fibrosis score F0 (1.54 ± 0.63) than with ≥F1 (0.97 ± 0.12, P = 0.013) as well as with ≤F1 (1.48 ± 0.60) than with ≥F2 (0.96 ± 0.36, P = 0.019).
Conclusion:
Our results showed that MR elastography with 16-mm sagittal grid and BE analysis had a potential in discrimination for the patients with moderate or advanced hepatic fibrosis from those with healthy liver or slight fibrosis.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (20591439) and in part by the Health and Labour Sciences Research Grants for Third Term Comprehensive Control Research for Cancer.
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Appendix
Appendix
The BE is invariant for movements of the liver such as rotation and translation and is only related to the energy that is used to deform the liver parenchyma. This property makes it very suitable to provide a quantitative measure of softness of the liver in cine-tagging MR images. The number of the points that were used to show the liver is an important parameter during the BE computations. This theory is used in non-rigid warping method known as thin plate spline [24].
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Watanabe, H., Kanematsu, M., Kitagawa, T. et al. MR elastography of the liver at 3 T with cine-tagging and bending energy analysis: preliminary results. Eur Radiol 20, 2381–2389 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-010-1800-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-010-1800-0