Steven Y. Huang1,
Samer Harmoush1, Mohamed E. Abdelsalam1, Joe Ensor2,
Katherine Dixon1, Ken-Pin Hwang3, Rony Avritscher1
1Dept
of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center,
Houston, TX, United States; 2Dept of Biostatistics, University of Texas
MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States; 3Dept of
Imaging Physics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX,
United States
In patients with cirrhosis, complications often arise from portal hypertension, which is an increase in the porto-systemic pressure gradient. The porto-systemic gradient is most commonly estimated by measuring the hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG). A large animal model of liver cirrhosis and portal hypertension is used to correlate liver stiffness measured by magnetic resonance elastography with HVPG. Significant correlations were observed between liver stiffness, hepatic fibrosis and HVPG. Our results corroborate the utility of MRE as a noninvasive method to measure liver fibrosis and HVPG while highlighting additional similarities between cirrhosis in humans and swine.