1Radiology,
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, United States; 2MR
R&D Collaborations, Siemens Healthcare, Atlanta, GA, United States; 3MR
R&D Collaborations, Siemens Healthcare, Morrisville, NC, United States; 4MR
R&D Collaborations, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany
Hepatic steatosis can precede liver inflammation, chronic fibrosis, and ultimately liver failure and malignancy. A novel method has been developed to measure proton density fat fraction from a multi-echo MRI acquisition. This is a hybrid magnitude/complex data method which takes advantage of the insensitivity to phase error of magnitude-data techniques and the full 0-100% dynamic range of complex-data techniques. This study looked to validate this technique against co-localized T2-corrected single voxel spectroscopy. Agreement between these two methods was very strong. Additionally, this technique allows for assessment of the variability of disease within the liver as well as total lipid burden.