Assessing Liver Fibrosis with Diffusion-weighted MRI-based Virtual Elastography

Recently, diffusion-weighted (DW) imaging–based elastography was proposed for noninvasive liver staging by converting a shifted apparent diffusion coefficient (sADC) to tissue elasticity on the basis of two b values (200 and 1500sec/mm2). We retrospectively calculated sADC from DW MRI and converted it to DW MRI–based virtual shear modulus (µDiff) for evaluating liver fibrosis in 90 patients. Our results showed the µDiff was significantly correlated with liver fibrosis stage, and the areas under the curves were 0.864 and 0.821 for significant and advanced fibrosis, respectively, indicating DW imaging–based elastography is a promising method for predicting liver fibrosis.