Evaluation of Combined Magnetic Resonance and Bioassay Methods for Quantitation of Human Liver Steatosis

Yvan Boulanger¹, Martin Ruel¹, Abdesslem Khiat¹, Luigi Lepanto¹, Miguel Chagnon², Claude Kauffman¹, An Tang¹, Louis Gaboury³, Gaspard d'Assignies¹

In order to determine the most reliable noninvasive technique or combination of techniques to detect and quantitate liver steatosis, correlations were assessed with fat fractions (FF) measured by a semi-automatic segmentation of liver histopathology slices for results of dual-echo imaging (DEI), MRS, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and several bioassays in 20 liver steatosis patients. Strong correlations were obtained for DEI, MRS and three bioassays but not for DWI data. Partial correlations combining two methods failed to improve the correlations with results from a single method. DEI and MRS therefore appear as the best methods to noninvasively quantify liver steatosis.