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Evaluation of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Using Ultrashort Echo Time Magnetization Transfer (UTE-MT) in Mice1The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China, 2University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States
Synopsis
Keywords: Liver, Liver
Motivation: UTE-MT can non-invasively quantify the macromolecular content changes of short T2 tissues, which has the potential to assess non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
Goal(s): To utilize the quantitative UTE-MT technique to assess NAFLD.
Approach: Sixteen mice (8 control mice and 8 mice with NAFLD) underwent liver scans using UTE-MT sequence on a 3T MRI scanner.
Results: The liver UTE-MTR values of mice in the NAFLD group were significantly lower than those in the normal group. High AUC values (AUC=0.955) obtained from the ROC analysis demonstrate that the UTE-MTR could differentiate the normal and NAFLD cohorts.
Impact: The UTE-MTR can detect the macromolecular changes in the liver. Liver UTE-MTR may serve as a promising imaging biomarker to assess NAFLD.
Introduction
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become the most common chronic liver disorder and is recognized to have a close, bidirectional association with components of metabolic syndrome [1]. Ultrashort echo time magnetization transfer (UTE-MT) can comprehensively image and quantify the macromolecular changes in both short and long T2 tissues [2-4]. This study aims to prospectively evaluate the macromolecular content change in mouse liver using the quantitative UTE-MT imaging technique with a rat model of NAFLD.Methods
Sixteen mice were enrolled in this prospective study. There are 8 control mice and 8 mice with NAFLD. The NAFLD mice were fed a high-fat diet for 12 weeks. All these mice were sacrificed and immediately scanned on a clinical 3T GE scanner with a mouse coil for signal reception. A Fermi pulse was employed to generate the MT contrast in the UTE-MT sequence with a duration of 8ms and bandwidth of 160 Hz. The frequency offset of this MT pulse was 1500 Hz. The UTE-MT sequence was scanned twice with a flip angle of 750° for MT-On and 0° for MT-Off. Other UTE-MT sequence parameters were as follows: TR = 104 ms, TE = 0.032 ms, excitation flip angle = 5°, number of spokes per-TR = 5, FOV = 6 × 6 cm2, matrix = 128 × 128, slice thickness = 1.2 mm, slice number = 26, and total scan time = 10 min. Liver UTE-MT ratio (UTE-MTR) value was measured and compared between the normal and NAFLD groups. A two-tailed test was used to investigate the difference in UTE-MTR measurements between normal and NAFLD cohorts. The performance of UTE-MTR in discrimination of the normal and NAFLD cohorts was also evaluated using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis.Results
Figure 1 shows representative UTE-MTR maps for the livers of the normal and NAFLD mice. The liver UTE-MTR values of mice in the NAFLD group (UTE-MTR = 0.2346) were significantly lower than those in the normal group (UTE-MTR = 0.2715) (P < 0.001) (Figure 2), demonstrating a lower macromolecular content in the NAFLD cohort. High area under the curve (AUC) values (AUC = 0.955) obtained from the ROC analysis demonstrate that the UTE-MTR could differentiate the normal and NAFLD cohorts (Figure 3).Discussion and Conclusion
To our best knowledge, this is the first prospective study of applying UTE-MT measurement in the liver to assess NAFLD. Our results indicate that the liver UTE-MTR values of the mice with NAFLD are significantly lower than those without NAFLD. The quantitative UTE-MT technique may serve as a noninvasive biomarker for the assessment of NAFLD.Acknowledgements
No acknowledgement found.References
[1] Powell EE, Wong VW, Rinella M (2021) Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Lancet 397:2212-2224
[2] Jerban S, Ma Y, Dorthe EW et al (2019) Assessing cortical bone mechanical properties using collagen proton fraction from ultrashort echo time magnetization transfer (UTE-MT) MRI modeling. Bone Rep 11:100220
[3] Jerban S, Ma Y, Wong JH et al (2019) Ultrashort echo time magnetic resonance imaging (UTE-MRI) of cortical bone correlates well with histomorphometric assessment of bone microstructure. Bone 123:8-17
[4] Li Y, Liang X, Liu J, Ma Y (2023) Assessment of Osteoporosis at the Lumbar Spine Using Ultrashort Echo Time Magnetization Transfer (UTE-MT) MRI. J Magn Reson Imaging. 10.1002/jmri.28910
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