Ingolf Sack1,
Rolf Reiter1, Korinna Joehrens2, Andreas Fehlner3,
Sebastian Hirsch1, Jing Guo4, Rajan Somasundaram5,
Daniel Seehofer6, Carsten Kamphues6, Abbas Samani7,
Juergen Braun8
1Department
of Radiology, Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 2Department
of Pathology, Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 3Department
of Radiology, Charit University Medicine, Berlin, Germany; 4Department
of Radiology, Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 5Interdisciplinary
Rescue Center, Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 6Department
of Transplantation Surgery, Charit - Universittsmedizin Berlin, Berlin,
Germany; 7Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; 8Institute
of Medical Informatics, Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Elastography has been established for the clinical assessment of liver fibrosis. However, little is known about the relationship between viscoelastic constants and pathophysiological mechanisms in the liver. In this study, samples of the liver of 16 patients with different degrees of fibrosis, inflammation and steatosis were investigated by wide-range MRE and by static indentation for the interaction between mechanical constants and structural parameters of human liver according to histology, matrix protein quantification and function tests. As a main result, MRE was the most sensitive modality to the degree of fibrosis outperforming static indentation experiments and chemical quantification of matrix proteins.