A study of T1 relaxation time as a measure of liver fibrosis and the influence of confounding histological factors

Hoad, Caroline L.; Palaniyappan, Naaventhan; Kaye, Philip; Chernova, Yulia; James, Martin W.; Costigan, Carolyn; Austin, Andrew; Marciani, Luca; Gowland, Penny A.; Guha, Indra N.; Francis, Susan; Aithal, Guruprasad P.

Abstract

Liver biopsy is the standard test for the assessment of fibrosis in liver tissue of patients with chronic liver disease. Recent studies have used a non‐invasive measure of T1 relaxation time to estimate the degree of fibrosis in a single slice of the liver. Here, we extend this work to measure T1 of the whole liver and investigate the effects of additional histological factors such as steatosis, inflammation and iron accumulation on the relationship between liver T1 and fibrosis. We prospectively enrolled patients who had previously undergone liver biopsy to have MR scans. A non‐breath‐holding, fast scanning protocol was used to acquire MR relaxation time data (T1 and T2*), and blood serum was used to determine the enhanced liver fibrosis (ELF) score. Areas under the receiver operator curves (AUROCs) for T1 to detect advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis were derived in a training cohort and then validated in a second cohort. Combining the cohorts, the influence of various histology factors on liver T1 relaxation time was investigated. The AUROCs (95% confidence interval (CI)) for detecting advanced fibrosis (F ≥ 3) and cirrhosis (F = 4) for the training cohort were 0.81 (0.65–0.96) and 0.92 (0.81–1.0) respectively (p 

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 11, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Apr 24, 2015
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Aug 29, 2018
• Print ISSN: 0952-3480
• Electronic ISSN: 1099-1492
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 706-714
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/nbm.3299
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1103421
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/nbm.3299
• PMID: 25908098