Chris Bradley1, Eleanor F Cox1, David Harman2, Martin W James2, Guru P Aithal2, I Neil Guha2, and Susan T Francis1
1Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, 2NIHR Biomedical Research Unit in Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
We perform a longitudinal 3 year study to assess progression of disease in compensated cirrhosis (CC) using annual haemodynamic and structural MR measures, and compare with a healthy volunteer group. Longitudinal relaxation time (T1) correlates with liver disease severity, and shows a small variance across years in stable, compensated cirrhosis. In contrast a large variance is shown for liver stiffness measures using Fibroscan®. MR measures correlate well with Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) scores. This study suggests that MR provides a sensitive technique to assess changes in pathophysiology of CC.
