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Abstract #4035

T1, T2 and T2* Relaxation Time Measurements in the Liver: Reproducibility, Inter- And Intra-Observer Variability

Caroline L. Hoad1, Naaventhan Palaniyappan2, Carolyn Costigan1, Eleanor F. Cox1, Luca Marciani2, Philip Kaye3, Neil Guha2, Robin C. Spiller2, Penelope A. Gowland1

1Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom; 2Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre, NIHR Biomedical Research Unit, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham, United Kingdom; 3Department of Cellular Pathology, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Derby Royal Hospital, Derby, United Kingdom


Reproducibility of whole liver relaxation time measurements using respiratory triggered echo-planar imaging was carried out on 8 healthy volunteers, scanned on 2 separate occasions. Modal T1, T2 and T2* parameters were obtained from fitting a Gaussian curve to the histograms of the fitted data. The coefficient of variance (CV) was 1.5 %, 3.1 % and 4.3 % for T1, T2 and T2* respectively. Inter- and Intra-observer variability was assessed using relaxation time data sets from 20 chronic liver disease patients. Inter- and intra-observer CVs were below 1% suggesting that biological variability and scanner related noise dominated the CVs of the reproducibility data.