Magnetic resonance elastography of the liver

The early detection of liver fibrosis remains a major challenge in medical imaging. Nowadays staging of liver fibrosis is not a task for radiological examinations and the gold standard is liver puncture. Elastography is sensitive to the mechanical properties of soft tissues and in the liver stiffness is highly correlated to the degree of fibrosis. In magnetic resonance imaging elastography (MRE) time-harmonic vibrations are induced in the liver and encoded by motion-sensitive phase-contrast sequences. Viscoelastic constants are recovered from the obtained wave images and displayed by so-called elastograms. The MRE procedure is able to discriminate low grades of fibrosis (F0-F1) from medium and severe fibrosis (F2-F4) with a diagnostic accuracy (AUROC) of 0.92. Currently, MRE is the most sensitive imaging modality for the noninvasive staging of liver fibrosis. Current technical developments of MRE may further improve the accuracy of the method towards a new gold standard for noninvasive staging of fibrosis by radiologists.