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Noninvasive quantitation of human liver steatosis using magnetic resonance and bioassay methods

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Abstract

The purpose was to evaluate the ability of three magnetic resonance (MR) techniques to detect liver steatosis and to determine which noninvasive technique (MR, bioassays) or combination of techniques is optimal for the quantification of hepatic fat using histopathology as a reference. Twenty patients with histopathologically proven steatosis and 24 control subjects underwent single-voxel proton MR spectroscopy (MRS; 3 voxels), dual-echo in phase/out of phase MR imaging (DEI) and diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DWI) examinations of the liver. Blood or urine bioassays were also performed for steatosis patients. Both MRS and DEI data allowed to detect steatosis with a high sensitivity (0.95 for MRS; 1 for DEI) and specificity (1 for MRS; 0.875 for DEI) but not DWI. Strong correlations were found between fat fraction (FF) measured by MRS, DEI and histopathology segmentation as well as with low density lipoprotein (LDL) and cholesterol concentrations. A Bland-Altman analysis showed a good agreement between the FF measured by MRS and DEI. Partial correlation analyses failed to improve the correlation with segmentation FF when MRS or DEI data were combined with bioassay results. Therefore, FF from MRS or DEI appear to be the best parameters to both detect steatosis and accurately quantify fat liver noninvasively.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Marc Bilodeau and Mrs. Assia Belblidia for their help with the recruitment of patients and the radiology technologists for performing the MR experiments. The financial support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and from the Société Française de Radiologie (scholarship to G. d’A.) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département de radiologie, Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Gaspard d’Assignies, Martin Ruel, Abdesslem Khiat, Luigi Lepanto, Claude Kauffmann, An Tang & Yvan Boulanger

  2. Département d’anatomo-pathologie, Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Louis Gaboury

  3. Département de mathématiques et de statistique, Université de Montréal (UDEM), Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Miguel Chagnon

  4. Département de radiologie, Hôpital Saint-Luc du CHUM, 1058 St-Denis, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H2X 3J4

    Yvan Boulanger

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  1. Gaspard d’Assignies
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  2. Martin Ruel
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  3. Abdesslem Khiat
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  4. Luigi Lepanto
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  5. Miguel Chagnon
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  6. Claude Kauffmann
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  7. An Tang
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  8. Louis Gaboury
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  9. Yvan Boulanger
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Correspondence to Yvan Boulanger.

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d’Assignies, G., Ruel, M., Khiat, A. et al. Noninvasive quantitation of human liver steatosis using magnetic resonance and bioassay methods. Eur Radiol 19, 2033–2040 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-009-1351-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-009-1351-4

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