Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) of Liver Disease

MRE is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based technology for non-invasively characterizing the biomechanical properties of tissues and may serve as a potential surrogate to invasive liver biopsies for diagnosing and staging liver fibrosis. MRE can be used to quantitatively image the direct consequence of liver fibrosisincreased stiffness of the hepatic tissue. MRE is performed following three basic steps: 1) using a vibration source to generate low frequency mechanical waves in tissue, 2) imaging the propagating waves using a phase contrast MRI technique and then 3) processing the wave information to generate quantitative images (elastograms) showing the mechanical properties, i.e. stiffness, of the tissue.