Liver Perfusion Quantification with MR-DCE Imaging at 3.0 T for Liver Fibrosis Assessment in Patients with Chronic Liver Diseases

Benjamin Leporq¹, Frank Pilleul, ¹², Jerome Dumortier³, Olivier Guillaud³, Thibaud Lefort², Sdika Michal¹, Olivier Beuf¹

Liver fibrosis is an important cause of mortality and morbidity in patients with chronic liver diseases. While an early detection and a clinical follow-up of liver fibrosis are required for therapeutic strategies, the actual gold standard cannot be used in the clinical follow-up due to inherent risk, interobserver variability and sampling errors. Our objective was to validate a MR protocol at 3.0 T for liver perfusion quantification using MR-DCE imaging with an auto-calibrated procedure for tracer concentration quantification. Validation was performed in-vivo on a prospective study including fourteen patients with chronic liver diseases. Results demonstrated that to quantify liver perfusion using MR-DCE imaging can be achieve at 3.0T. Quantitative perfusion parameters such as HPI, MTT, portal and total perfusion could be relevant biomarkers to make the distinction between the absence of fibrosis, non-advanced fibrosis, and advanced fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis as well as in patients with NAFLD.