Abstract #0734

Liver Fat & Water MR T2 Values at 3T: Dependence Upon Steatosis Level

Andrew James Gilman¹, Aliya Qayyum¹, Michelle Nystrom¹, Susan Moyher Noworolski¹

¹Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

While T2 decay times are known to change between tissues and with disease, liver T2_fat and T2_water and their dependence on steatosis havent been reported at 3T. T2 values were calculated from multiple-echo 3T MR liver spectra in 12 NAFLD patients and 3 healthy controls. T2_fat (62.99.8ms) was much higher than T2_water(27.24.0ms). With increasing MRS fat fraction, T2_fat tended to increase (p<0.075) while T2_water significantly decreased (p<0.04). Similar correlations were observed versus the patients histologically determined steatosis grades. This suggests the importance of accounting for T2 when acquiring liver MRS because of its dependency upon measurement technique and disease state.