Diagnostic value of MR-based texture analysis for the assessment of hepatic fibrosis in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)

PurposeTo investigate the performance of MR-based texture analysis (TA) for the assessment of hepatic fibrosis in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).MethodsFifty-four adult patients (33 females, 21 males, mean age 49.813.5years) with biopsy-proven NAFLD were enrolled and underwent MR imaging on a 1.5T system. TA parameters were extracted on axial noncontrast 3D-GRE T1W images (slice thickness=4.6mm) using a commercially available research software (TexRAD). Receiver operating curves (ROC), areas under the ROC (AUROC) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to assess the accuracy of each TA parameter for the diagnosis of significant (F2) and advanced fibrosis (F3). The correlation between TA and histopathological features of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) was tested calculating the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient ().ResultsThirty-seven (68%) subjects had significant fibrosis and 20 (37%) had advanced fibrosis. The TA parameters with the best performance were standard deviation (SD) and entropy, respectively, with AUROC 0.755 (95% CI 0.619-0.862, p0.0002) and 0.769 (95% CI 0.634-0.873, p<0.0001) for significant fibrosis and AUROC 0.746 (95% CI 0.609-0.854, p0.0004) and 0.754 (95% CI 0.618-0.861, p0.0002) for advanced fibrosis. SD and entropy demonstrated a moderate correlation with the degree of fibrosis (=0.457 and 0.480; p<0.01). No significant correlation was found between TA parameters and other histopathological features of NASH.Conclusionsp id=ParEntropy and SD extracted on T1-weighted MR images have fair accuracy for the diagnosis of significant and advanced hepatic fibrosis in patients with NAFLD.