Quantification of liver fat using non-invasive MRI-PDFF technique versus guided biopsy in potential liver donor

Abstract

Introduction: Significant hepatic steatosis affects the outcome of surgery when living donors are transplanted. The gold standard for diagnosing and evaluating hepatic steatosis is hepatic imaging-guided biopsy. Hepatic steatosis assessment using MR spectroscopy and the proton density fat fraction (MR-PDFF) method has produced positive findings. Objectives: Is to compare the pre-operative assessment of liver fat quantification using MRI-PDFF methods, a non-invasive method, with histopathology. Subjects and methods: A 42 potential donors were then operated surgically for liver transplantation, consequently, were available for the assessment of the efficiency and sensitivity of the radiological findings MRI-PDFF procedures and imaging-guided liver biopsy. This radiological workup of these donors was done through a period of 7 months. Results: In many liver transplantations centers, liver imaging-guided biopsy histopathological examination is the gold standard. The study examined the MR proton density fat fraction modality, a recently developed test for hepatic steatosis measurement. The findings indicate 86.8% sensitivity, 50% specificity, 94.2% PDV, 28.5% NPV, 83.3% accuracy, and 0.684 AUC. On analyzing the fat percent, we found that the recorded fat percent using liver imaging-guided biopsy ranges between 1 and 10% with a median of 3. On the other hand, the recorded fat percent using MRI ranged between 2 and 15% with a median of 5. Conclusion: The non-invasive magnetic resonance hepatic proton density fat fraction approach using IDEAL sequence is a reliable and accurate means of quantitatively evaluating hepatic steatosis with excellent sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy.