Multiparametric MR Is a Valuable Modality for Evaluating Disease Severity of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Introduction: Because nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is becoming a leading cause of chronic liver disease, noninvasive evaluations of its severity are immediately needed. This prospective cross-sectional study evaluated the effectiveness of noninvasive assessments of hepatic steatosis, fibrosis, and steatohepatitis.

Methods: Patients underwent laboratory tests, liver biopsy, transient elastography, and MRI. Multiparametric MR was used to measure MRI proton density fat fraction, MR spectroscopy, T1 mapping, and MR elastography (MRE).

Results: We enrolled 130 patients between October 2016 and July 2019. For the diagnosis of moderate-to-severe steatosis (grade ≥ 2), the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) was lower in controlled attenuation parameter (0.69; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.60-0.76) than MRI proton density fat fraction (0.82; 95% CI, 0.75-0.89; P = 0.008) and MR spectroscopy (0.83; 95% CI, 0.75-0.89; P = 0.006). For the diagnosis of advanced fibrosis (stage ≥ 3), the AUROC of MRE (0.89; 95% CI, 0.83-0.94) was superior compared with those of the Fibrosis-4 index (0.77; 95% CI, 0.69-0.84; P = 0.010), NAFLD fibrosis score (0.81; 95% CI, 0.73-0.87; P = 0.043), and transient elastography (0.82; 95% CI, 0.74-0.88; P = 0.062). For detecting advanced fibrosis or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, the AUROC of MRE (0.86; 95% CI, 0.79-0.91) was higher than that of TE (0.76; 95% CI, 0.68-0.83) with statistical significance (P = 0.018).

Discussion: Multiparametric MR accurately identified a severe form of NAFLD. Multiparametric MR can be a valuable noninvasive method for evaluating the severity of NAFLD.