Noninvasive assessment of hepatic steatosis

Hepatic steatosis, the accumulation of lipids within hepatocytes, is a common condition. The prevalence of its most frequent manifestation, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), has been estimated to be as high as 35% in some populations. Currently, liver biopsy is the gold standard for the diagnosis and assessment of severity of hepatic steatosis, staging of fibrosis, and is the only modality able to differentiate bland steatosis from steatohepatitis. However, its invasiveness, significant side effect profile, and susceptibility to sampling error ultimately make it a suboptimal tool. Accordingly, focus has been placed on noninvasive radiologic techniques for hepatic fat detection and quantification. The rationale, performance characteristics, and limitations of traditional noninvasive measures, including ultrasound, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy and imaging, are reviewed. A novel MR method, the spectrally modeled relaxation-invariant technique, overcomes the inherent weaknesses of conventional MR to diagnose and quantify hepatic steatosis over its entire range of severity. Noninvasive radiologic techniques, particularly MR, can be applied broadly, including in the diagnosis of NAFLD in asymptomatic patients with elevated serum aminotransferase levels, longitudinal monitoring of disease progression or response to treatment, population-based epidemiologic or observational studies, and drug discovery.