Abstract #0093

Bahl G, Chavez A, Collins J, Wolfson T, Gamst A, Motta G, Hassanein T, Bydder G, Sirlin C, Behling C

Current staging of liver fibrosis requires biopsy, which is invasive and prone to sampling error. We assessed non-invasive grading of liver fibrosis using texture analysis of combined contrast enhanced MR imaging with histology as the reference in 122 patients. A blinded radiologist assessed MR images qualitatively. Additionally, 256 quantitative texture features were measured in each patient and a forward selection algorithm based on a Bayesian information criterion was used to build a model to predict histological fibrosis stage. Pairwise Spearman correlation showed excellent agreement between qualitative MR and pathology, quantitative MR and pathology, and qualitative MR and quantitative MR.