Abstract #2285

Confidence Maps for Reliable Proton Density Fat-Fraction Estimation in the Presence of Low SNR

Jayse M Weaver^1,2, Nathan T Roberts^2,3, Diego Hernando^1,2, and Scott B Reeder^1,2,4,5,6

¹Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁶Emergency Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Synopsis

Chemical-shift-encoded MRI (CSE-MRI) is an established technique to estimate proton density fat-fraction (PDFF) as a quantitative imaging biomarker of hepatic steatosis. However, due in part to low flip angle acquisitions, CSE-MRI acquisitions often have low SNR leading to biased and noisy PDFF measurements. Unreliable PDFF measurements are particularly problematic considering clinically relevant PDFF thresholds may be as low as 3-5%. There are currently no methods to gauge the reliability of PDFF measurements. We propose a method for generating color-coded CSE-MRI estimation confidence maps, using a normalized residual metric to determine PDFF measurement reliability.

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