Comparison of multislice breath‐hold and 3D respiratory triggered T₁ρ imaging of liver in healthy volunteers and liver cirrhosis patients in 3.0 T MRI

Abstract

Of the tested sequences, the image quality of MS HS8 T1 ρ was best, but 3D BLOCK T1 ρ with respiratory triggering should also be considered as an alternative sequence for clinical diagnosis of liver cirrhosis due to its superior coverage. J. MAGN. RESON. IMAGING 2016;44:906-913.

Breath-hold black-blood T1rho mapping improves liver T1rho quantification in healthy volunteers

“…Wang et al and Zhao et al described the usefulness of T1rho magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for assessment in rat liver fibrosis models, suggesting increased T1rho value is associated with collagen deposition in the fibrotic liver but less so with inflammatory edema (10,11). Studies in human participants, both in healthy volunteers and liver fibrosis patients, soon followed (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22). With a two-dimensional (2D) fast gradient echo (GRE) sequence, Deng et al and Zhao et al reported the mean T1rho value was 42.8 AE 2.1 ms (B 0 ¼ 3T, B 1 ¼ 500 Hz) in healthy volunteers (12,13).…”

“…In patients with chronic liver diseases, Takayama et al (19) demonstrated liver T1rho value showed significant positive correlations with the serum levels of total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, and indocyanine green (ICG-R15), and significant negative correlations with the serum levels of albumin and g-glutamyl transpeptidase. Yang et al (20) reported the difference of the mean liver T1rho values between the healthy volunteers and cirrhosis patients was statistically significant for the three sequences they tested, namely, multi-slice and 3D sequence with a block RF pulse used for spin-locking or a stretched type adiabatic pulse for spin-locking.…”

Combined morphological and functional liver MRI using spin-lattice relaxation in the rotating frame (T1ρ) in conjunction with Gadoxetic Acid-enhanced MRI

“…One limitation concerns the methodology of the study: The subjective aspect of the ROI placement, even with the instructions given in former studies, could make it difficult to reproduce the results. However, some studies have shown that a good interobserver reproducibility exists 26,27,32 . Another limitation of all studies investigating T1ρ is the diversity of sequence protocols and image analysis.…”

T 1ρ mapping improvement using stretched-type adiabatic locking pulses for assessment of human liver function at 3 T

“…Recently, T 1ρ measurement has been widely applied to investigate diseases of the cartilage [13][14][15][16][17], prostate, disc [18], myocardium [19], and liver [7,8,[20][21][22][23]. With regard to the liver, Wang et al reported that in an animal model T 1ρ relaxation was used successfully to detect early liver fibrosis and that increased liver collagen results in an increase of the T 1ρ value [20].…”

“…A few papers reported application of adiabatic pulses for spin locking. Taheri S et al and Michaeli S reported a simulation study [32,33], Mangia S et al studied the brain at 4 T [34], Casula V et al studied knee cartilage [35] and Yang Q et al applied them to liver [22].…”