Assessment of liver function in primary biliary cirrhosis using Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced liver MRI

Gd-EOB-DTPA (gadolinium ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid) is a gadolinium-based hepatocyte-specific contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The aim of this study was to determine whether the hepatic uptake and excretion of Gd-EOB-DTPA differ between patients with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and healthy controls, and whether differences could be quantified.

Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced liver MRI was performed in 20 healthy volunteers and 12 patients with PBC. The uptake of Gd-EOB-DTPA was assessed using traditional semi-quantitative parameters (C(max) , T(max) and T(1/2) ), as well as model-free parameters derived after deconvolutional analysis (hepatic extraction fraction [HEF], input-relative blood flow [irBF] and mean transit time [MTT]). In each individual, all parameters were calculated for each liver segment and the median of the segmental values was used to define a global liver median (GLM).

Although the PBC patients had relatively mild disease according to their Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD), Child-Pugh and Mayo risk scores, they had significantly lower HEF and shorter MTT values compared with the healthy controls. These differences significantly increased with increasing MELD and Child-Pugh scores.

Dynamic hepatocyte-specific contrast-enhanced MRI (DHCE-MRI) has a potential role as an imaging-based liver function test. The high spatial resolution of MRI enables hepatic function to be assessed on segmental and sub-segmental levels.