An Auto-Processing Algorithm for Liver Fat Quantification

Abstract

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is useful for rapid and robust liver fat quantification. MR spectra of liver can be acquired in a single breath-hold with the high-speed multi-echo stimulated echo acquisition mode, from which T2-corrected liver proton density fat fraction (PDFF) can be derived. However, the widespread application of this method is hampered by the cumbersome post-processing procedures for the spectroscopy data. In this work, an automated algorithm for liver fat quantification from multi-echo spectroscopy data was developed. The feasibility and accuracy of the algorithm were evaluated with fat-water phantoms experiments and human liver experiments. The results demonstrated excellent correlation and agreement between the PDFF measurements with the proposed algorithm and those obtained with the jMRUI software.

Keywords

• magnetic resonance spectroscopy
• high-speed T2-corrected multi-echo acquisition
• proton density fat fraction
• spectral post-processing algorithm