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Updated: Jun 9, 2026
A 3D Quantification Technique for Liver Fat Fraction Distribution Analysis Using Dixon Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Published on: October 20, 2023
Simultaneous assessment of liver volume and whole liver fat content: a step towards one-stop shop preoperative MRI
Gaspard d'Assignies1, Claude Kauffmann, Yvan Boulanger
1Department of Medical Imaging, University of Montreal and Centre de recherche, Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CRCHUM), Hôpital Saint-Luc, 1058 rue Saint-Denis, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability of a whole liver volume (WLV) segmentation algorithm to measure fat fraction (FF).
Methods:
Twenty consecutive patients with histologically proven fatty liver disease underwent dual-echo in-phase/out-of-phase MRI and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) at 1.5 T. Two readers independently performed semiautomatic 3D liver segmentation on the out-of-phase sequences using an active contour model. FF was calculated for voxels, segments and WLV. Segmentation inter-observer reproducibility was assessed by intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) for WLV and FF. Fat fraction correlation and agreement as determined by histology, MRS and MRI were determined.
Results:
ICC was 0.999 (95% CI: 0.999-1, P < 0.001) for WLV FF calculation and 0.996 (95% CI: 0.990-0.998, P < 0.001) for whole liver volume calculations. Strong correlations were found between FF measured by histology, MRS and WLV-MRI. A Bland-Altman analysis showed a good agreement between FF measured by MRS and WLV-MRI. No systematic variations of FF was found between segments when analyzed by ANOVA (F = 1.78, P = 0.096).
Conclusion:
This study shows that a reproducible whole liver volume segmentation method to measure fat fraction can be performed. This strategy may be integrated to a "one-stop shop" protocol in liver surgery planning.
