Published online Mar 28, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i12.1513
Peer-review started: December 21, 2018
First decision: January 18, 2019
Revised: January 29, 2019
Accepted: February 22, 2019
Article in press: February 23, 2019
Published online: March 28, 2019
Processing time: 99 Days and 3.3 Hours
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is currently the outstanding cause of chronic liver disease in children and adolescents, especially in overweight and obese groups. Liver biopsy is the reference standard to diagnose NAFLD but invasive, thus it is not the best choice in clinical diagnosis and follow-up. Magnetic resonance (MR) is widely used in clinical trials to noninvasively quantify liver fat content in adults and children in foreign countries. While currently, it is rarely used in Chinese children and adolescents. We postulated that quantifying hepatic steatosis by MR could be extended to children and adolescents in China.
To investigate the accuracy of MR imaging (MRI) in quantifying liver fat with MR spectroscopy (MRS) as a reference. A secondary goal was to assess the prevalence of NAFLD in overweight and obese Chinese children and adolescents.
There were 86 children and adolescents enrolled in this study, including 65 overweight and obese children and 21 healthy children. The participants underwent MRI and MRS. MRI and MRS were performed using multi-echo Dixon and HISTO sequences, respectively, to calculate hepatic proton density fat fraction (PDFF). Hepatic steatosis was diagnosed using MRS-PDFF > 5% as the threshold. Spearman’s analysis was used to evaluate the correlation between MRI and MRS. The agreement between these two methods was assessed by Bland-Altman analysis.
The MRI-PDFF in the MRS region of interest and the entire liver was 9.9% ± 10.3% with a range of 0.3%-39.9%, and 10.6% ± 9.4% with a range of 1.9%-38.9%, respectively. The MRS-PDFF was 9.1% ± 10.0%, with a range of 0.5%-37.8%. The incidence of hepatic steatosis detected by MRS-PDFF was 46.5% (40/86) of all participants, all of whom belonged to the overweight and obese group. Spearman’s analysis indicated an excellent correlation between multi-echo Dixon and MRS (r > 0.9, P < 0.01). Bland-Altman analysis also demonstrated a good agreement between these two methods.
Multi-echo Dixon shows an excellent correlation and agreement with MRS in quantifying liver fat content and could be a potential tool to detect hepatic steatosis in Chinese children and adolescents.
Core tip: Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is thought to be the noninvasive gold standard in the quantification of hepatic steatosis. The present study investigated the accuracy of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in quantifying liver fat content in Chinese children and adolescents, with MRS as a reference. MRI and MRS were performed with multi-echo Dixon and HISTO sequences, respectively, to calculate hepatic proton density fat fraction. Multi-echo Dixon showed an excellent correlation and agreement with MRS in quantifying liver fat content, indicating that it could be a potential tool to detect hepatic steatosis in Chinese children and adolescents.