Noninvasive Assessment of Liver Stiffness with Tagged MRI

Sohae Chung¹, Elodie Breton¹, Lorenzo Mannelli¹, Hersh Chandarana¹, Leon Axel¹

A pathological hallmark of the progression to cirrhosis is the development of liver fibrosis, so that monitoring the appearance and progression of liver fibrosis can be used to guide therapy. Fibrosis of the liver is known to result in increased mechanical stiffness, so that the assessment of liver stiffness is a key feature. In this study, we describe a new MRI liver assessment method by using the pulsations of the heart as an intrinsic motion source and by using magnetization-tagged MRI (tMRI) as a noninvasive method to image the motion of the liver for the assessment of liver stiffness.