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Abstract #3438

Diffusion-Weighted Hyperpolarized 13C-Urea in a Murine Model of Liver Fibrosis

Irene Marco-Rius1, Jeremy A Gordon1, Peder EZ Larson1, Romelyn delos Santos1, Robert A Bok1, Aras Mattis2,3, Jacquelyn Maher3,4, Daniel B Vigneron1,3, and Michael A Ohliger1,3

1Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, 2Department of Pathology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, 3Liver Center, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, 4Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States

Diffusion weighted MRI has been widely used to measure the movement of water molecules and study tissue microstructure in order to characterize both diffuse and focal liver disease. In liver fibrosis, for instance, increased collagen formation is associated with restricted diffusion of water. However, the majority of water within the liver is either in the vascular or intracellular space, making the diffusion of water a potentially poor marker for fibrosis, which is an extracellular process. Here, we investigated applying diffusion-weighted MRI with an exogenously injected extracellular agent, hyperpolarized 13C-urea, as a potentially more sensitive probe of the extracellular space in the liver in a mouse model of liver fibrosis induced with CCl4.

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