Mark Rosen1, Sarah Englander1, Harish Poptani1, Evan Siegelman1, James Gimpel2, Dena Flamini2, Matthew Parris3, Bill Sasiela3, Bruce Hillman4
1Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 2American College of Radiology Imaging Network, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 3Aegerion, Inc., Bridgewater, NJ, USA; 4Radiology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
A multisite trial of the MTP inhibitor AEGR-733 using hepatic MRI/MRS for liver fat determination was performed. Both single voxel (SV) MRS and multiple dual-echo gradient echo MRI data were used to quantify hepatic fat. A total of 1160 exams with evaluable MRI and MRS data sets were obtained. Correlation of hepatic fat by SV-MRS and several dual-echo MRI methods ranged from 0.870-0.890 for all data sets, 0.935-0.942 for protocol compliant MRI data, and 0.949-0.955 high-quality MRS data. Dual-echo MRI with correction for T1 and T2* effects outperformed other methods, with lower mean squared variation and fewer outlying data points.