Comparison of Accuracy of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic and Imaging Techniques for the Liver Steatosis Assessment

The article describes the determination of the amount of fat in liver tissue (steatosis) by non-invasive methods of H-1 magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy and MR imaging in vivo on whole body tomographs. Commercially available PRESS, STEAM and HISTO techniques for H-1 MR spectroscopy and 3D-Dixon techniques for MR imaging on a 3T MR tomograph were used. The accuracy and usability of individual techniques were verified on prepared lipid phantoms in the concentration range of 2.5-30% fat and on a representative group of volunteers. It turns out that MR spectroscopic and imaging methods are currently fully comparable.