Iris Y. Zhou1, Nicholas Rotile1, Veronica Clavijo Jordan1, Gunisha Arora2, Smitha Krishnan2, Hannah Slattery1, Noah Warner1, Christian T. Farrar1, Bryan C. Fuchs2, and Peter Caravan1
1Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Institute for Innovation in Imaging (i3), Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States, 2Division of Surgical Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), characterized by the presence of steatosis, inflammation and fibrosis, has a high prevalence and is associated with poor outcomes. While liver biopsy is the gold standard for assessment of fibrosis, it is invasive with potential complications. Recently, liver T1 measurement without intravenous contrast has been proposed to stage liver fibrosis. Here, we evaluated T1 mapping for monitoring disease progression and treatment response in a choline-deficient high-fat diet rat model of NASH. Instead of correlating with fibrosis, we found a strong correlation of T1 with histologically determined liver fat fraction but not with histological and biochemical measures of fibrosis.
