Dania Daye1, Chenyang Wang, Eric Mellon2, Santosh Gaddam3, Rebecca Wells4, Emma Furth5, Ravinder Reddy3
1Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 2Department of Biophysics and Molecular Biochemistry, University of Pennsylvania; 3Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania; 4Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania; 5Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
While hepatic cirrhosis is a major leading cause of adult death in the US, the gold standard to diagnose and monitor the progress of patients afflicted with this condition remains limited to liver biopsy. Biopsies, however, an often irreproducible and plagued with many complications. T1ρ-based MR imaging is a technique that has previously shown promise in quantifying macromolecular concentration. Given that liver fibrosis manifests as a progressive deposition of extracellular matrix proteins, we hypothesized that T1ρ imaging can be used to quantify protein deposition in fibrosis. Our preliminary results show that T1ρ imaging might have significant potential to provide for a quantitative and non-invasive assessment of hepatic fibrosis.
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