Field Strength Reproducibility of Hepatic Proton Density Fat Fraction Estimation by a Complex-Data, T1-Independent, T2*-Corrected, Spectrum-Modeled MRI Technique

Benjamin Johnson¹, Michael Schroeder¹, Katie Hansen¹, Geraldine HyeWon Kang¹, Tanya Wolfson¹, Anthony Gamst¹, Scott B. Reeder², Claude B. Sirlin¹, Mark Bydder¹

With over ten million Americans affected by non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), there is a need for a non-invasive biomarker of liver fat content. Because confounders lead to inaccurate estimates of liver fat when using conventional MRI, advanced MRI techniques are being developed and refined to address these problems and accurately and precisely predict hepatic fat content. We demonstrate the reproducibility across field strength of an advanced complex-based MRI technique that corrects for confounders such as T1 bias, T2*, spectral complexity of liver fat, eddy currents and noise bias.