Meeting Banner
Abstract #0260

Assessment of Liver Fibrosis: Comparison of Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) and Diffusion-Weighted Imaging (DWI)

Frank H. Miller1, Yi Wang2, Robert McCarthy, Zongming Chen, Andrew Larson2, Laura Sternick, Daniel Ganger, Richard Ehman3, Josh Levitsky, Reed Omary2, Laura Merrick2, Bradley D. Bolster, Jr4, Sven Zuehlsdorff4, Saurabh Shah4, Paul Nikolaidis2, Vahid Yaghmai2

1Radiology , Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States; 2Radiology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States; 3Radiology, Mayo Clinic; 4Siemens Healthcare


We prospectively compared and assessed the discriminatory capabilities of MRE and DWI in detecting and staging hepatic fibrosis in patients with suspected chronic liver diseases using histopathologic analysis as the reference standard. Our study demonstrated that the stiffness values on MRE had a positive linear correlation with degree of liver fibrosis and had greater capability for discriminating stages of fibrosis compared to ADCs on DWI. Furthermore, the absence of fibrosis, mild fibrosis, moderate fibrosis, and late-stage fibrosis (F3-4) can be distinguished from one to another by stiffness values; however, the individual stages of fibrosis could not be differentiated by ADCs.