Chris R Bradley^1,2, Deirdre McGrath^1,2, Eleanor F Cox^1,2, and Susan T Francis^1,2
1Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Iron-mediated T₂* effects are more prominent in MRE data acquired at 3T compared to 1.5 T, and have been suggested to lead to failure rates of up to 15% for MRE at 3T. MRE based liver stiffness was measured using the QIBA recommendation with a 2D gradient‐recalled‐echo MRE sequence using a 1.5x4.5x10 mm³ acqusition. For comparison, MRE data was also collected at 4.5mm isotropic spatial resolution. A larger voxel volume in the MRE acquisition provided higher SNR which in turn resulted in a higher proportion of voxels being fit for stiffness with confidence >0.95.

Chris R Bradley^1,2, Eleanor F Cox^1,2, Naaventhan Palaniyappan², Guruprasad P Aithal², I Neil Guha², and Susan T Francis^1,2
1Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Baseline multi-organ MRI measures of structure and haemodynamics in the liver, spleen, heart and kidneys were collected in healthy volunteers, compensated cirrhosis (CC) and decompensated cirrhosis patients to benchmark the change in measures with disease severity. In a stable CC cohort, observed annually for 3 years, we show liver T₁, liver perfusion, superior mesenteric artery flow, spleen perfusion, and renal cortex T₁ (measures that predict negative liver related outcomes) have sufficient resolution to track disease progression.

Hui Wang^1,2,3, Amol Pednekar^2,3, Jean A. Tkach^2,3, Kaley R. Bridgewater², Andrew T. Trout^2,3, Jonathan R. Dillman^2,3, and Charles L. Dumoulin^2,3
1Philips, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ²Department of Radiology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ³Department of Radiology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, United States

We describe a fast field-echo Magnetic Resonance Elastography pulse sequence to measure liver stiffness in less than half the breath hold time (≈6.3 sec/slice) of the conventional implementation. Key features include: 1) non-alternating motion encoding gradients to allow a shorter TR while maintaining appropriate gradient waveform polarity synchronization with the applied mechanical motion; 2) interleaved flow saturation pre-pulses to suppress flow; and 3) pseudorandom undersampling k-space with Compressed SENSE reconstruction. The technique was validated in two gel phantoms differing in stiffness and used to evaluate liver stiffness in five volunteers.

Hui Wang^1,2,3, Amol Pednekar^2,3, Jean A. Tkach^2,3, Charles L. Dumoulin^2,3, Kaley R. Bridgewater², Andrew T. Trout^2,3, and Jonathan R. Dillman^2,3
1Philips, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ²Department of Radiology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ³Department of Radiology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, United States

We describe a 3D fast field echo (FFE) Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) pulse sequence for measurement of liver stiffness in a single breath hold. The key features of the sequence include: 1) 3D acquisition; 2) mechanical wave magnitude labelling of 1.5 cycles of motion for each RF excitation; 3) flow saturation pre-pulses to suppress vascular flow; and 4) pseudorandom undersampling of k-space with Compressed SENSE reconstruction. The technique was validated in two gel phantoms with different stiffness and used to measure liver stiffness in five volunteers.

Deep B. Gandhi¹, Adebayo B. Braimah¹, Jonathan Dudley¹, Jean A. Tkach¹, Amol Pednekar¹, Andrew T. Trout¹, Alexander G. Miethke², Jeremiah A. Heilman³, Bogdan Dzyubak⁴, David S. Lake⁴, and Jonathan R. Dillman^1
1Imaging Research Center, Department of Radiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ²Division of Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ³Resoundant Inc., Rochester, MN, United States, ⁴Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States

Autoimmune liver diseases lead to fibrosis and is manifested as excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix and collagen that ultimately causes increase in liver stiffness. MR Elastography (MRE) has proven to be an important tool to clinically diagnose liver fibrosis. In this study we performed MRE at 1.5T on 65 subjects with autoimmune liver disease. The data was then manually processed by 2 independent readers and an automated algorithm. Near-perfect correlation and excellent agreement were observed between Reader1 and Reader2 against the automated algorithm (r=0.987 and r=0.981, respectively). Readers had excellent inter-reader agreement(ICC=0.988) and the automated algorithm also demonstrated perfect reproducibility.

Deep B. Gandhi¹, Jonathan Dudley¹, Ruchi Singh², Jean A. Tkach¹, Divya Sharma³, Amy Taylor², Alexander G. Miethke², and Jonathan R. Dillman^1
1Imaging Research Center, Department of Radiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ²Division of Hepatology, Gastroenterology and Nutrition, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States, ³Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States

Autoimmune liver diseases can lead to hepatic fibrosis which, when progressive, can lead to liver failure ultimately requiring transplantation. In this study 31 patients with autoimmune liver diseases underwent conventional and GraSE T2 mapping at 1.5T as well as liver biopsy with histologic fibrosis staging. Significant positive correlations between GraSE and conventional liver T2 measurements were observed for the weighted mean of all slices (r=0.80; p<0.0001) and for individual slices from all subjects (r=0.72; p<0.0001). Conventional T2 measurements were higher, on average, than GraSE T2 measurements.  There was no significant correlation observed between liver T2 measurements and histologic fibrosis stage.

Jian Lyu^1,2, Guixiang Yang^3,4, Yingjie Mei⁵, Li Guo^1,2,6, Yihao Guo^1,2, Kaixuan Zhao¹, Xinyuan Zhang^1,2, Yikai Xu^3,4, and Yanqiu Feng^1,2
1School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ²Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ³Department of Medical Imaging Center, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ⁴Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Ministry of Education, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ⁵Philips Healthcare, Guangzhou, China, ⁶Department of MRI, The First People’s Hospital of Foshan (Affiliated Foshan Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University), Foshan, China

T1rho represents the spin-lattice relaxation time constant in the rotating frame, which sever as a biomarker for liver function associated with alteration in the macromolecular content of tissues. Diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) was developed to measure non-Gaussian diffusion, which have increasingly been used to characterize microstructural heterogeneity in vivo. Sinusoidal obstruction syndrome (SOS) is a dynamic process with complex histopathological changes in liver. Our study attempts to investigate the relationship between T1rho and DKI parameters in the light of pathological examinations to help us better understand the contribution of the possible factors to changes in T1rho.

Hai-Feng Liu¹, Li-Qiu Zou², Qing Wang¹, Yu-Feng Li¹, Ya-Nan Du¹, and Wei Xing^1
1Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, changzhou, China, ²Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, shenzhen, China

In this prospective experimental study, we evaluated the independent value and diagnostic efficacy of multi-parametric MRI using quantitative measurements of the liver stiffness (LS) on MRE, liver-to-muscle signal intensity ratio (SIR) on SWI, and T1ρ value for staging LF in a  rabbit model. 

Hanns-Christian Breit¹, David Winkel², and Tobias Heye^2
1Radiology, University Hospital of Basel, Basel, Switzerland, ²University Hospital of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Aim of our study was to evaluate confounding factors for the assessment of liver fibrosis. A total of 200 patients were retrospectively included (67 patients with fibrosis or cirrhosis, 40 patients with acute elevation of laboratory parameters, 93 healthy patients).  T1 values were significantly lower in healthy patients without known fibrotic changes than in patients with acute liver disease or known fibrosis or cirrhosis. Therefor T1 mapping seems to be a capable predictor for the detection of liver fibrosis and cirrhosis.

Zheng You^1,2, Lei Jun-qiang², and Xu Yong-sheng^2
1First Clinical Medical College of LanZhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China, ²Radiology, First Hospital of LanZhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China

This study aimed to determine whether whole-liver apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) histogram parameters can contribute to hepatic fibrosis staging. We evaluated quantitative histogram parameters between different pathological fibrosis stages. And the diagnostic performance of ADC histogram parameters in discriminating stage 1 or greater (≥F1), stage 2 or greater (≥F2), and stage 3 or greater (≥F3) liver fibrosis were compared. The results showed that many histogram parameters (kurtosis, skewness, entropy, mode, 75^th and 90^th percentiles) had statistical significance among the pathologic liver fibrosis stages (P<0.05), and kurtosis yielded the highest area under the curve (0.801).

Minori Onoda¹, Yu Ueda², Satoshi Kobayashi^1,3,4, Tosiaki Miyati³, Naoki Ohno³, Yudai Shogan¹, Tadanori Takata¹, Yukihiro Matsuura¹, and Toshifumi Gabata^4
1Department of Radiological Technology, Kanazawa University hospital, Kanazawa, Japan, ²Philips Japan, Tokyo, Japan, ³Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Medical, Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan, ⁴Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Hospital, Kanazawa, Japan

In this study, we compared the degree of R1rho dispersion in liver of healthy volunteers and patients with liver disease to better understand the behavior of T1rho in liver. T1rho in normal liver tissue was correlated with the perfusion-independent diffusion coefficient (D) calculated by IVIM analysis, whereas in patients with liver disease, there was no correlation between T1rho and D. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between the R1rho dispersion values in liver between volunteers and patients.

Yavuz Muslu^1,2, Steven Kecskemeti^2,3, Diego Hernando^1,2,4, and Scott B. Reeder^1,2,4,5,6
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Department of Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴Department of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁶Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Quantitative T₁ mapping in the liver is an emerging biomarker of hepatic fibrosis and characterization of liver function. Existing T₁ mapping methods in abdomen are generally sensitive to tissue fat and B1 inhomogeneities , both of which confound estimates of T₁. Further, Cartesian methods may suffer from motion related ghosting artifacts. In this work, we propose to combine 3D-radial inversion recovery with chemical shift encoded imaging to jointly estimate T₁ of water, T₁ of fat, proton density fat fraction (PDFF), and B₀ and B₁ inhomogeneities. The feasibility and performance of the proposed method are evaluated with simulations, and phantom experiments.

Tae-Hoon Kim¹, Ji Eon Kim¹, Jong-Hyun Ryu¹, SeungJin Kim², Min-Gi Pak², Chang-Won Jeong¹, and Kwon-Ha Yoon^1,3
1Medical Convergence Research Center, Wonkwang University, Iksan, Korea, Republic of, ²Medical Science, Wonkwang University, Iksan, Korea, Republic of, ³Radiology, Wonkwang University, Iksan, Korea, Republic of

Liver fibrosis is a hallmark of chronic liver disease (CLD) characterized by the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix proteins. To diagnose and grade the liver fibrosis, liver biopsy is the reference standard, however the method has some limitations, including potential pain, sampling variability, and low patient acceptance. Therefore, there have been efforts to develop noninvasive imaging techniques and quantification softwares for diagnosis, staging, and monitoring of liver fibrosis. This study developed a MRI-suitable quantification program for assessing heterogeneity and nodularity in the liver and compared the difference between fibrosis grades in CLD.

Jing Li¹, Xinming Li¹, Xianyue Quan¹, Genwen Hu², Yingjie Mei³, Da Shi¹, Shisi Li⁴, Zhendong Qi¹, and Xiao Zhang^5
1Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ²Shenzhen People’s Hospital, Clinical Medical College of Jinan University, Shenzhen, China, ³Phlips Healthcare, Guangzhou, China, ⁴The Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ⁵Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China

To explore the potential of histogram analysis to evaluate the liver fibrosis stages, histogram of T1rho and ADC were acquired from liver fibrosis model built in seventy-five rats by injecting 50% carbon tetrachloride and olive oil. In this study, we found that the parameters of histogram analysis showed strong correlations with liver fibrosis stages, as well as inflammatory activity，while T1rho is regarded to be better than ADC.

Yoshihiko Fukukura¹, Yuichi Kumagae¹, Hiroaki Nagano¹, Koji Takumi¹, Hiroshi Imai², Marcel Dominik Nickel³, and Takashi Yoshiura^1
1Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Kagoshima, Japan, ²Siemens Healthcare K.K., Tokyo, Japan, ³Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

This study focused on the feasibility of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) with compressed sensing T1-weighted volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination (csVIBE) for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and correlation with extracellular volume fraction (ECV). Our results indicated that DCE-MRI obtained with csVIBE is feasible for the assessment of PDACs and the ECV fraction can be used in place of DCE-MRI parameters for predicting treatment response or survival in patients with PDAC.

Jun Lu¹, Dech Dokpuang¹, Rinki Murphy², Lindsay Plank², John Zhiyong Yang¹, Reza Nemati³, and Kevin Haokun He^4
1School of Science, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand, ²School of Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, ³Canterbury Health Laboratories, Canterbury District Health Board, Christchurch, New Zealand, ⁴Saint Kentigern College, Auckland, New Zealand

Pancreatic fat has been reported to be closely related to type 2 diabetes risk, hence is the subject of our investigation in a clinical trial. Pancreatic fat changes before and after a 12-week intermittent fasting programme with or without daily probiotic were determined using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Two-point Dixon protocol was used to scan patients and manual image-processing method was used to quantify the fat. A significant reduction in pancreatic fat was observed after intermittent fasting, while addition of probiotic did not increase pancreatic fat reduction.

Tingting Zhang¹, Yimei Lu¹, He Wang², and Dengbin Wang^1
1Radiology, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China, ²Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Shanghai, China

 This study aimed to visualize the pancreas of rats with uncontrast MRI and validate the contour of pancreas by infusing gadolinium solution into the biliopancreatic duct for post-mortem imaging at 11.7 T MRI.  Also, the reproducibility of metrics with diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) were evaluated in the pancreas of rats. We found that MRI at 11.7T could facilitate preclinical experiments in rodent pancreas and DKI appeared to be a useful noninvasive imaging tool to research pancreatic diseases with satisfactory reproducibility.

Yuhui Liu^1,2, Ailian Liu³, Queenie Chan⁴, Qinhe Zhang³, and Wan Dong^3
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, Dalian, China, ²Dalian medical university, Dalian, China, ³Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ⁴Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

At present study, ADC, T1, T2, APT, sADC, D*，D, f, FF and R2* of pancreas in patients with fatty liver and control subjects were measured. This study viewed that there was a significant difference in sADC between two groups (P=0.01). This may illustrate that fatty liver has an impact on the function of pancreas.

Arthur Peter Wunderlich^1,2, Stephan Kannengießer³, Lena Kneller¹, Berthold Kiefer³, Holger Cario⁴, Meinrad Beer¹, and Stefan Andreas Schmidt^1
1Dept. for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Ulm University, Medical Center, Ulm, Germany, ²Section for Experimental Radiology, Ulm University, Medical Center, Ulm, Germany, ³Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany, ⁴Dept. for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Ulm University, Medical Center, Ulm, Germany

To study pancreatic iron accumulation in liver overloaded patients in relation to hepatic and splenic iron content, 90 patients were investigated at 1.5 T MRI with a prototype breath hold volumetric 3D GRE sequence with in-line R2* calculation. Mean R2* values were determined in liver, spleen and pancreas by manually drawn ROIs. Pancreatic R2* values were related to hepatic and splenic R2* by multiple linear regression, yielding significant correlation in two subgroups: a) frequently transfused patients, and b) regular transfused patients. Correlation, and therefore, ability to predict pancreatic R2*, improved by including splenic R2* compared to solely hepatic R2*.

Qiang Wei¹, Ailian Liu¹, Dongna Yi¹, Queenie Chan², Qingwei Song¹, Renwang Pu¹, Lihua Chen¹, Yu Zhang¹, and Jiazheng Wang^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The challenging problem of MR living examination is how to obtain images with diagnostic image quality in a shorter scan time. The purpose of this study is to explore the value of 3D mDixon sequence using compressed SENSE (CS) technology in liver examination. Compared with free-breathing mDixon with 3D Vane sequence, breath-hold (BH) 3D mDixon SENSE factor 2 and BH 3D mDixon CS factor 2 sequence can effectively improve the signal-to-noise ratio, contrast-to-noise ratio of the image and the image quality, and significantly shorten the scanning time.

Jin Yamamura¹, Peter Nielsen², Sarah Keller³, Regine Grosse⁴, Björn Schönnagel¹, and Roland Fischer^2,5
1Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, ²Biochemistry, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, ³Diagnsotic and Interventional Radiology, Universitätsmedizin Charité, Berlin, Germany, ⁴Hemato-Oncology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany, ⁵Diagnostic Radiology, UCSF-Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, Oakland, CA, United States

HFE-associated hereditary Hemochromatosis (HFE-HH) is the most frequent monogenic genetic disorder in the Caucasian population. The excessive iron storage in organs are common, affecting the liver mostly (> 90 %) resulting in a potentially severe liver damage (fibrosis, cirrhosis). In recent years, hepatic and cardiac iron deposition has been studied in detail. Due to its involvement in the development of diabetes - a frequent co-morbidity in iron overload diseases - pancreatic iron should become a field of interest. This study aims to determine the pancreatic iron and fat content in patients with HFE-HH. 

Antonella Meloni¹, Massimiliano Missere², Gennaro Restaino², Laura Pistoia¹, Vincenzo Positano¹, Emanuele Grassedonio³, Nicolò Schicchi⁴, Giuseppe Peritore⁵, Francesco Massei⁶, Nicola Dello Iacono⁷, Angelica Barone⁸, and Alessia Pepe^1
1MRI Unit, Fondazione G. Monasterio CNR-Regione Toscana, Pisa, Italy, ²Fondazione di Ricerca e Cura "Giovanni Paolo II", Campobasso, Italy, ³Policlinico "Paolo Giaccone", Palermo, Italy, ⁴Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Ospedali Riuniti "Umberto I-Lancisi-Salesi", Ancona, Italy, ⁵"ARNAS" Civico, Di Cristina Benfratelli, Palermo, Italy, ⁶Azienda Ospedaliero Universitaria Pisana – Stabilimento S.Chiara, Pisa, Italy, ⁷Ospedale Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza IRCCSOspedale Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza IRCCS, San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, ⁸Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Parma, Parma, Italy

In patients with hemoglobinopathies fat infiltration is a common finding and pancreatic volume is significantly lower than in normal subjects but it is not associated to age or gender. Pancreatic iron overload is present in the 74% of the patients and it is associated with reduced pancreatic volume. Patients with diabetes have a lower pancreatic volume.

Qinhe Zhang¹, Wan Dong¹, Jiazheng Wang², Yishi Wang², and Ailian Liu^1
1The first affiliated hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

This study measured the quantitative imaging metrics of the pancreas using DWI, IVIM, and 3D mdixon-quant sequences in healthy subjects and correlated these quantitative metrics with age, gender and BMI. This study showed that there were noticeable differences in sADC, f between genders (p<0.05). It shows that pancreatic cells of male are closely arranged, cell gap is reduced, and water diffusion is limited and pancreatic perfusion reduce，which may be because pancreatic fat content of male overweigh that of female(5.16% vs.3.68%).  

Yaru You¹, Qinhe Zhang¹, Ailian Liu¹, Jiazheng Wang², and Liangjie Lin^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

In recent years, population of non-alcoholic fatty liver diseases (NAFLD) have shown a trend of increasing. Besides, studies have reported that NAFLD was associated with pancreatic fat infiltration. 3D mDixon Quant has been widely used for evaluation of fat fraction in various organs/tissues. In the present study, the 3D mDixon Quant sequence was employed to assess the relationship between liver and pancreatic fat contents. Results suggested that there was a significant positive correlation between liver and pancreatic fat contents (r=0.624, P<0.05), which may be helpful for clinical diagnoses.

Yaru You¹, Qinhe Zhang¹, Ailian Liu¹, and Jiazheng Wang^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The diagnosis pancreatic fat infiltration is commonly performed with consideration of histopathology in combination with CT /MRI images. This study evaluated the performance of two fat content measurement methods using 3D mDIXON Quant images, based on interest-based hand-drawn area (ROI) placement and threshold-based segmentation. Results by the two methods show good agreement, indicating that both of the two methods can be reliable for evaluation of the pancreas fat content. While, the method based threshold segmentation is recommended in this study, since it can provide a full evaluation of fat contents across the pancreas and can be more convenient in implementation.

Qi liu¹, Jing Gang Zhang¹, Jie Chen¹, Wei Xing¹, and Jilei Zhang^2
1Changzhou First People's Hospital, Changzhou, China, ²Clinical Science, Philips Healthcare, Shanghai, China

The resectability and pathological grade of pancreatic cancer are important for prognosis of patients. We try to predict the pathological grade and the resectability of pancreatic cancer by quantitative IVIM-DWI. Comparing the IVIM parameters of resectable and unresectable pancreatic cancer, poorly differentiated and highly-moderately differentiated pancreatic cancer, we found that poorly differentiated pancreatic cancer had lower f value than highly-moderately differentiated pancreatic cancer, and resectable pancreatic cancer had higher d, f values than unresectable pancreatic cancer. The quantitative IVIM parameters can predict the resectability and pathological stage of pancreatic cancer, which can be helpful for assessment of resectability.

Alexandre Triay Bagur¹, Ged Ridgway², Michael Brady², and Daniel Bulte^1
1Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, ²Perspectum Diagnostics, Oxford, United Kingdom

The proximal locations of the liver and pancreas in the abdomen make it tempting to report the PDFF of both in a single scan. However, published methods for liver fat measurement need revision before they accurately measure pancreatic fat. UK Biobank scans were used to quantify the quality of fits of a method developed previously for liver PDFF when applied to the pancreas. Pancreas fits were an order of magnitude lower than fits in the liver or the spleen. This could be due to a suboptimal acquisition or because the liver fat model does not approximate well to the pancreas.

Jie Yang¹, Qinhe Zhang¹, Ailian Liu¹, Jiazheng Wang², and Zhongping Zhang^2
1The first affiliated hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The pancreatic volume can reflect the function of the pancreas to a certain extent. The 3D mDixon Quant can be used to assess the volume of the tissue structure, but some patients cannot tolerate the long-term breath test. This study was designed to ensure pancreas volume using different CS acceleration factors on the premise of ensuring image quality. The results show that CS-SENSE 6 guarantees image quality and reduces scan time.

Mayumi Takeuchi¹, Kenji Matsuzaki², and Masafumi Harada^1
1Department of Radiology, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan, ²Department of Radiological Technology, Tokushima Bunri University, Sanuki-city, Japan

MR spectroscopy of pathologically proven 26 ovarian mucinous tumors (9 benign and 17 malignant) was retrospectively evaluated. N-acetyl mucinous compounds (NAMC) peak at 2 ppm was observed in all 26 lesions. Lipid peak was observed in 1 of 9 benign tumors (11%) and 12 of 17 malignant tumors (71%). The presence of lipid peak for the diagnosis of malignancy had a sensitivity of 71%, specificity of 89%, PPV of 92%, and NPV of 62%. We conclude that the bimodal peaks of NAMC and necrosis-associated lipid are suggestive of malignant mucinous tumors.

Mayumi Takeuchi¹, Kenji Matsuzaki², and Masafumi Harada^1
1Department of Radiology, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan, ²Department of Radiological Technology, Tokushima Bunri University, Sanuki-city, Japan

Uterine adenomatoid tumor (AT) is a rare benign neoplasm of mesothelial origin. MRI findings of surgically proven 10 ATs were retrospectively evaluated. Most ATs (9/10) appeared as a heterogeneous intensity mass on T2WI with admixture of well-defined myoma-like low intensity area reflecting the areas of smooth muscle hypertrophy, and ill-defined high intensity areas reflecting the areas of abundant tubules. AT may contain high intensity areas on DWI, occasionally appearing as ring-like high intensity area (3/9),  with relatively high ADC (6/9) due to T2 shine-through effect. Intra-tumoral hemorrhage was observed on SWAN (1/6) but not on T1WI (0/10).

Takahiro Ueda¹, Yoshiharu Ohno¹, Kaori Yamamoto², Akiyoshi Iwase³, Takashi Fukuba³, Yuki Obama¹, Kazuhiro Murayama⁴, and Hiroshi Toyama^1
1Radiology, Fujita Health University School of Medicine, Toyoake, Japan, ²Canon Medical Systems Corporation, Otawara, Japan, ³Radiology, Fujita Health University Hospital, Toyoake, Japan, ⁴Joint Research Laboratory of Advanced Medical Imaging, Fujita Health University School of Medicine, Toyoake, Japan

There have been no major reports for assessing the utility of compressed sensing (CS) and deep learning reconstruction (DLR) on women’s pelvic MRI as compared with routinely applied parallel imaging (PI).  We hypothesized that CS with DLR was able to improve image quality and shorten examination time on women’s pelvic MRI, when compared with PI. The purpose of this study was to directly compare the utility of CS and DLR with PI at women’s pelvic MRI examination in patients with different women’s pelvic diseases.

han xu¹, jie zhang², ximing wang³, qingwei liu³, and xiang feng^4
1radiology, shandong provincial hospital, JINAN, China, ²shandong provincial hospital, JINAN, China, ³shandong provincial hospital, jinan, China, ⁴MR Scientific Marketing,Diagnostic Imaging, Siemens Healthcare Ltd, beijing, China

This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of T2 mapping in  differentiating endometrial cancer (ECA) from benign endometrial lesions (BEL), as well as to evaluate the histopathological stages, grades and types of ECA.We measured the mean T2 values of 51 endometrial cancer,12 benign endometrial lesions and 23 normal endometrium of volunteers.We found the mean T2 values were signifcantly different among ECA, BEL and normal volunteers, and could be used to distinguish different types of ECA, but could not distinguish different stages or grades of ECA.

Yaxin Niu¹, Shifeng Tian¹, Wan Dong¹, Xing Meng¹, Lihua Chen¹, Qingwei Song¹, Jiazheng Wang², Zhiwei Shen², Ailian Liu¹, and Queenie Chan^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian Medical University, Da Lian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China, Bei jing, China

We aimed to explore the value of amide proton transfer-weighted (APTw) imaging combined with diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) in differentiating pathological grades of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of cervix. The result showed that the highest diagnostic efficacy (AUC: 0.971) was acquired using APTw combined with mean kurtosis (MK).

Liuhong Zhu¹, Puyeh Wu², and Jianjun Zhou^1
1Xiamen Branch, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Xiamen, China, ²MR Research China, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China

 It is challenging to differentiate between uterine submucous myoma and endometrial polyps, due to a high similarity of their manifestations in conventional MRI. Meanwhile, T2 mapping is an objective and stable technique which has been applied to diagnosis of many diseases. Here we evaluate the value of quantitative measurements derived from T2 mapping and DWI in differentiating between uterine submucous myoma and polyps. We found a descending order of T2 values from healthy endometrium, endometrial polyp to submucous myoma group. We concluded that T2 mapping can be used as a quantitative tool in the differentiation between submucous myoma and polyps.

Xing Meng¹, Ailian Liu ¹, Shifeng Tian¹, Ye Ju¹, and Qingwei Song^1
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China

Enhanced T2^* weighted angiography (ESWAN) has been applied in the diagnosis of female pelvic tumor, but no study on the differentiation of endometrial cancer and related benign lesions by ESWAN has been found. We investigated the value of ESWAN multiple quantitative parameters in the identification of endometrial carcinoma and endometrial polyps.

Ye Ju¹, Xing Meng¹, Shifeng Tian¹, Liangjie Lin², Jiazheng Wang², Zhiwei Shen², Yishi Wang², Yaxin Niu¹, Wan Dong¹, and Ailian Liu^1
1First affiliated hospital of dalian medical university, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

APT imaging has been preliminarily explored for diagnoses of cervical diseases. In this study, we investigated the potential of APTw-MRI in differential diagnosis of endometrial carcinoma and benign endometrial lesions.

Ye Li¹, Yaxin Niu¹, Xuedong Wang¹, Lihua Chen¹, Yanling Wu², and Ailian Liu^1
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The intensity of the APT signal depends on the pH and protein content within the tissue. The later the bleeding stage is, the lower the APT value is. The ectopic endometrium repeatedly bleeds in the ovary. The blood components deposited in the cyst fluid decomposition, so the APT value of the cyst fluid is reduced. The metabolic level of tumor tissue is increased, and more protein is synthesized. Therefore, the protein content of ovarian cystadenoma and cystadenocarcinoma fluid is higher, so the APT value is increased.

Wen Shi^1,2, Guohui Yan³, Yamin Li^2,4, Haotian Li¹, Tintin Liu¹, Yi Zhang¹, Yu Zou³, and Dan Wu^1
1Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Biomedical Engineering & Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, ²Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China, ³Department of Radiology, Women's Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, ⁴School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China

Accurate estimation of the brain age is important for the evaluation of brain development, especially in the fetal stage when little diagnostic tools are available. This study designed attention-based deep ensembles to estimate brain age in the normal developing fetus, based on axial T2-weighted in-utero MRI images from routine clinical scans. Mean absolute error of 0.803 week was achieved, and the attention maps highlighted the regions of interest associated with the estimation. Predictive uncertainty was simultaneously quantified, and together with the proposed prediction confidence, we were able to detect several types of anomalies, including small head circumference, malformations, and ventriculomegaly. 

Jonan Chun Yin Lee¹, Renata Kiri Mak¹, and Janice Wong Li Yu^1
1Radiology, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Fetal MRI is a useful investigation to visualize congenital anomalies and allow for appropriate counselling and timely intervention. Since early 2017, our hospital has begun to perform fetal MRI from obstetric referrals. 18 pregnant patients underwent fetal MRI for suspected fetal anomalies. The neurological system was the most common region of concern during fetal MRI (67%). When compared to antenatal ultrasonography, fetal MRI provided significant additional and/or change in diagnostic information in 44% of patients , and results in change in postnatal outcome and/or facilitation of postnatal management in 44% of patients, including termination of pregnancy and prompt surgical intervention.

Ruiming Chen¹, Sydney Nguyen^2,3,4, Kai D. Ludwig¹, Daniel Seiter¹, Megan E. Murphy^2,3,4, Kathleen M. Anthony^2,3,4, Terry K. Morgan⁵, Ante Zhu^6,7, Dahan Kim¹, Sean B. Fain^1,6,7, Oliver Wieben^1,6, Thaddeus G. Golos^2,3,4, and Kevin M. Johnson^1,6
1Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Comparative Biosciences, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Pathology, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, United States, ⁶Radiology, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁷Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Effective non-invasive assessment of placental health, particularly in early pregnancy, is of clinical interest but currently lacking.  Arterial spin labeling (ASL) MRI can safely provide local functional assessment of placental perfusion, however, placental perfusion imaging is challenging and current approaches have shortcomings. Here we investigate a multi-slice velocity-selective (VS ASL) sequence with volumetric placental perfusion assessment and report on local and global perfusion across multiple gestational stages for zika-infected rhesus macaques and healthy controls. 

Tao Lu^1
1Sichuan academy of medical Medical Sciences ＆ Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, Chengdu, China

Placental morphological and physiological characteristics are related to health of the newborn and the adult. IVIM offers a quantitative and objective technique to measure maternal placental function without use of the contrast agent. In our study, Whole-placenta volumetric IVIM analysis is used to evaluate the parameters from IVIM of the entire placenta and avoids the subjectivity of ROI placement to ensure calculation accuracy and repeatability. 

Yen-Ling Huang^1,2, Yu-Ting Huang^1,3, Kueian Chen^1,2,4, and Gigin Lin^1,2,4
1Department of Medical Imaging and Intervention, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou, Taoyuan, Taiwan, ²Imaging Core Laboratory, Institute for Radiological Research, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou and Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, ³Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Keelung, Keelung, Taiwan, ⁴Clinical Metabolomics Core Laboratory, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Cervical cancer with bladder invasion is rare and carries a poor prognosis. MR imaging is useful in the detection of bladder mucosal involvement from cervical cancer, with reported high negative predictive value, and therefore can serve to justify the necessities of invasive cystoscopy. Diffusion-weighted imaging is superior to T2-weighted and contrast-enhanced MR study in accurately diagnosing bladder invasion.

Youngwook Kee¹, Christopher M. Sandino², Joseph Y. Cheng¹, Timothy Colgan³, Diego Hernando³, Ann Shimakawa⁴, and Shreyas S. Vasanawala^1
1Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States, ²Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States, ³Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴GE Healthcare, Redwood City, CA, United States

In this study, free-breathing QSM and R2* mapping of liver iron overload was enabled using a 3D multi-echo cones trajectory.  The proposed method was compared with a chemical-shift-encoded MRI technique that requires breath-holding.  QSM and R2* exhibit similar image quality in axial, sagittal, and coronal views as well as good agreement in ROI-based quantitative value based on Bland-Altman and linear correlation plots.  The imaging time for free-breathing liver iron quantification takes ~4 min, which can be further accelerated by increasing readout duration or using compressed sensing.

Collin J Buelo^1,2, Jing Zhou³, Ante Zhu^2,4, Kritisha Rajlawot⁵, Bingjun He⁵, Diego Hernando^1,2, Jin Wang⁵, and Scott B. Reeder^1,2,4,6,7
1Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Pathology, The third Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China, ⁴Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Radiology, The third Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China, ⁶Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁷Emergency Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Histological grading of iron deposition in the liver has been shown to correlate with conventional magnitude-based R2* mapping methods. However, magnitude-based R2* mapping methods are known to exhibit bias in the presence of fat and when signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is low. Multipeak fat-corrected complex R2* mapping enables accurate R2* measurements by correcting for fat-related bias and the bias due to low SNR, but has not been compared to histological iron grading. In this work, multipeak fat-corrected R2* mapping is validated by comparing with histological iron grading as the reference standard.

Adrienne E Campbell-Washburn¹, Christine Mancini¹, Anna Conrey¹, Lanelle Edwards¹, Hui Xue¹, Peter Kellman¹, W. Patricia Bandettini¹, and Swee Lay Thein^1
1National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States

Iron overload in the liver can be assessed with MRI by measurements of T2* and R2*. In this study, we assessed the dynamic range of hepatic T2* values using a high-performance 0.55T, compared to 1.5T, in patients with iron overload. Patients with iron overload had increased dynamic range of T2* values at 0.55T (T2* = 11.8 ± 9.4ms) compared with 1.5T (T2* = 5.7 ± 6.0ms), and the measurements were closely correlated between 0.55T and 1.5T (r = 0.96). The improved field homogeneity at 0.55T may provide value for stratification and monitoring of patients with severe iron overload by T2*.

Zili David Chu^1,2 and Raja Muthupillai^3
1Radiology, Baylor College of Medicine, MISSOURI CITY, TX, United States, ²Pediatric Radiology, Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, TX, United States, ³Radiology, Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, Houston, TX, United States

T2/T2* based relaxometry is increasingly used to non-invasively quantify tissue iron content in lieu of biopsy.  However, studies have shown that the observed linear relationship between R2 (1/T2) and tissue iron concentrations does not hold true above an iron concentration threshold (dubbed as the ‘saturation threshold’) [1,2].  Our numerical simulations and phantom experiments show that the choice of interval between the echo times used to sample T2 decay, and noise levels play a crucial role in determining the saturation threshold, and that the linear relationship between iron concentration and R2 can be extended by judiciously varying echo spacing. 

Ramin Jafari^1,2, Yan Wen^1,2, Pascal Spincemaille², Thanh D. Nguyen², Martin R. Prince², Xianfu Luo³, Daniel Margolis², and Yi Wang^1,2
1Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States, ²Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, United States, ³Northern Jiangsu People's Hospital, Yangzhou, China

Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) enables accurate non-invasive monitoring of liver iron to guide iron-chelation therapy. Feasibility of a breath-hold sequence has been demonstrated in healthy subjects and in patients. In this work we investigate feasibility of a free-breathing navigator sequence  in healthy volunteers to generate QSM maps and compare its correlation with the breath-hold sequence.

John P. Mugler¹, Elisabeth Weiland², Thomas Benkert², Craig H. Meyer¹, Josef Pfeuffer², and Berthold Kiefer^2
1University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States, ²Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany

Current free-breathing, respiratory-triggered, heavily T2-weighted 3D fast/turbo spin-echo acquisitions work well in many patients for MRCP, but non-diagnostic results are obtained in some patients, particularly those with irregular breathing patterns during the several-minute acquisition.  Thus, there has been renewed interest in 3D MRCP techniques that can be completed within a single breath-hold period as an alternative for patients in whom free-breathing techniques are inadequate.  This work demonstrates that breath-hold 3D MRCP based on a 3D stack-of-spirals turbo spin-echo acquisition, which uses in-plane acceleration to achieve a reasonable breath-hold time, can provide good image quality for evaluation of major ductal structures.

Vishal Singh¹, Jaladhar Neelavalli², Suhail P Parvaze², Mamta Gupta¹, A K Seth¹, and Rakesh Kumar Gupta^1
1Radiology, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon, India, ²Clinical Science, Philips Innovation Campus, Philips India Limited, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Confident detection of small common bile duct stones is clinically challenging. Ultrasound (US) has highly variable sensitivity and the sensitivity of MRCP, while better than that of US, reduces significantly for stones<5mm. In this work, we have evaluated the relative contribution of SWI in the detection of CBD stones, relying on their susceptibility property. 

Christian Simonsson^1,2, Markus Karlsson^1,3, Bengt Norén¹, Gunnar Cedersund², Per Sandström⁴, Anna Lindhoff Larsson⁴, Nils Dahlström^1,3, and Peter Lundberg^1,3
1Departments of Radiation Physics, Radiology, Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, ²Department of Medical Engineering, Linköping University,, Linköping Univeristy, Linköping, Sweden, ³Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV), Linköping Univeristy, Linköping, Sweden, ⁴Department of Surgery, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicin, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Just after surgery there is a period were the remnant tissue needs to match the requirement of normal liver function while recovering. This could lead to fatal consequences after too extensive surgical procedures, or due to insufficient liver function. In contrast, it might also be the case that the surgical procedure is too conservative because the predicted liver function is underestimated. This would not have been the case if it was possible to use more precise measures of liver function. We investigated the capabilities of gadoxetate enhanced MRI for determining liver function pre- and post-surgery using two separate approaches.

Mengke Wang¹, Yan Bai¹, Wei Wei¹, Jing An², Yuyu Wang², Muhammed Labeeb², Xianchang Zhang³, and Meiyun Wang^1
1Department of Medical Imaging, Henan Provincial People’s Hospital & Zhengzhou University People’s Hospital, Zhengzhou, China, ²Siemens Shenzhen Magnetic Resonance Ltd., Shenzhen, China, ³MR Collaboration, Siemens Healthcare Ltd., Beijing, China

Patients with common bile duct (CBD) stone disease suffer from the relatively long scan time of magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP). Compressed sensing (CS) is a technique that can accelerate the speed of MRI and has been applied to MRCP. This study investigated the utility of CS-MRCP in diagnosing CBD stone disease in comparison with conventional MRCP on the 1.5T scanner. The results showed that CS-MRCP could provide comparable image quality with conventional MRCP for the diagnosis of CBD stone disease but with a substantially shorter acquisition time (1:35 vs. 4:08 mins).

Ming He¹, Xiaoqi Wang², Jiazheng Wang², Zhengyu Jin¹, and Huadan Xue^1
1Department of radiology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The purposes of this study were to prospectively evaluate the clinical feasibility of a MRCP protocol using both Vital Eye and compressed SENSE(CS-VE-MRCP) and to compare its performance with original navigator-triggered (NT) CS-NT-MRCP and NT-MRCP. The results show that the imaging quality and diagnostic performance of CS-VE-MRCP was comparable to that of NT-MRCP and slightly superior than that of CS-NT-MRCP. Besides, the scan time of CS-VE-MRCP was significantly decreased compared to that of NT-MRCP. The combination of compressed SENSE and Vital Eye in MRCP was feasible, suggesting the potential of imaging time reduction without pampering the diagnostic capability.

Qiuxia Luo¹, Xiaoyong Zhang², Qianwei Xie¹, Guijin Li³, Bingjun He¹, and Jin Wang^1
1The Third Affiliated Hospital,Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China, ²MR Collaborations, Siemens Healthcare Ltd, Shenzhen, China, ³Siemens Healthcare Ltd, Guangzhou, China

Conventional three-dimensional navigator-triggered magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (NT-MRCP) is widely used in clinics for the evaluation of the anatomy and abnormalities of the pancreaticobiliary system. However, the method has limitations because of its extensive time to acquire images. This study explored the efficiency and the clinical utility of 3D breath-hold MRCP (BH-MRCP) as an alternative to conventional NT-MRCP at 3 Tesla. Based on these, methods used on a sample population of 25 patients, the results showed that the BH-MRCP technique can be a viable alternative to enhance the clinical workflow of pancreatobiliary MRI.

Mamoru Takahashi¹, Yasuo Takehara², Takuya Matsumoto³, Yoshikazu Nagura³, Tomoyasu Amano³, Norihiro Tooyama¹, Katsutoshi Ichijo¹, Yasutomo Katsumata⁴, and Satoshi Goshima^5
1Radiology, Seirei Mikatahara General Hospital, Hamamatsu, Japan, ²Nagoya University, Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan, ³Seirei Mikatahara General Hospital, Hamamatsu, Japan, ⁴Philips Electronics Japan, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, ⁵Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu, Japan

MRCP accelerated with GRASE (GRASE-MRCP) allowed single breath-holding 3D MRCP and better depiction of the cystic duct because of short TE. On the other side, background signal such as blood vessels sometimes remained. Incorporating MSDE into GRASE-MRCP made it possible to suppress the background signals without extending the image time and reducing the image quality.

Xin Li¹, Yue Qin¹, Yifan Qian¹, Juan Tian¹, Shaoyu Wang², Yinhu Zhu¹, Liyao Liu¹, Yanqiang Qiao¹, and Boyuan Jiang^1
1XI’AN DAXING HOSPITAL, ShaanXi, Xi’an, China, ²Siemens Healthcare Ltd, ShaanXi, Xi’an, China

Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) is an effective imaging modality for the evaluation of anatomy and abnormalities of biliary and pancreatic system. The main drawback of conventional navigator-triggered (NT) MRCP is the long acquisition time resulting in a greater variability in the depth of respiration, which may create image blurring and motion artifacts. In this study, we performed MRCP scanning using a single breath hold (BH) 3D SPACE and NT SPACE protocols to evaluated the image quality and acquisition time in patients with choledocholithiasis.

Cheng-Ping Chien^1,2, Feng-Mao Chiu³, and Hsiao-Wen Chung^1
1Graduate Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ²Taipei Beitou Health Management Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, ³Philips Healthcare, Taipei, Taiwan

3D MR cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) based on gradient- and spin-echo (GRASE) and 2D thick-slab MRCP using fast spin-echo (FSE), both acquired within single breath-hold, were compared using a 4-point score at 3T on 95 healthy subjects (age range = 25-75) in eight different segments of hepatic and pancreatic ducts.  3D GRASE outperformed 2D thick-slab FSE in the common bile duct and common hepatic duct, but compared inferiorly in right anterior hepatic duct (p < 0.001), with insignificant difference (p > 0.05) for the other five ducts.  It is concluded that 2D thick-slab FSE MRCP complements 3D GRASE MRCP if performed additionally.

Renwang Pu¹, Jiazheng Wang², Liangjie Lin², Jingjun Wu¹, Qingwei Song¹, Nan Zhang¹, and Ailian Liu^1
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China, beijing, China

The present study aims to explore feasibility of three-dimensional(3D)breath-hold(BH)magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) through acceleration of the combination of compressed sensing and sensitivity encoding(CS-SENSE),and choose an optimal acceleration factor. 3D-MRCP scans on healthy volunteers were carried out with different acceleration factors (conventional SENSE factor of 4, and CS-SENSE factors of18, 24, and 32).The CS-SENSE acceleration factor of 24 was recommended because of the favorable image quality and reasonable scan duration (15s).

Jiachen Ji¹, Di Wu², Yunduo Li¹, Shenghong Ju², and Rui Li^1
1Center for Biomedical Imaging Research, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, ²Zhong Da Hospital Southeast University, Nanjing, China

Type2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a metabolic disease with high morbidity. 4D Flow MRI is an advanced technique which could provide visualization and quantification of blood flow. In the study, we identified the reproducibility of the processing and measuring procedure of abdominal 4D Flow data and discovered the significant hemodynamic differences in the affected vessels between T2DM patients and controls using 4D Flow MRI. The differences indicated the systematic hemodynamic changes caused by the disease and hinted 4D Flow MRI could offer more help in the evaluation and better understanding of the disease.

Sanjay K Verma¹, Lijuan Sun², Suresh Anand Sadananthan³, Navin Michael³, Hui Jen Goh², Govindharajulu Priya², Melvin Khee-Shing Leow^2,4, and S Sendhil Velan^1
1Singapore Bioimaging Consortium, Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, Singapore, ²Clinical Nutrition Research Centre, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, Singapore, ³Singapore Institute of Clinical Sciences, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, Singapore, ⁴Department of Endocrinology, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore, Singapore

BAT dissipates heat energy during adaptive thermogenesis regulated by several complex neuronal mechanisms including thyroid hormones. Twelve hyperthyroid subjects, treated with an anti-thyroid drug intervention were investigated using simultaneous PET-MR imaging. A significant increase in body weight and decrease in resting metabolic rate after treatment were observed. MR fat fraction significantly increased after treatment, whereas there is no significant change in PET-SUV.  MR is more sensitive to the thyroid hormone induced changes, and can be utilized to study the BAT activity.

Stephen Bawden^1,2, K Manoj³, Elizabeth Simpson¹, K Leena⁴, Moira Taylor¹, Sally Hibbert⁵, Amrita Vijay¹, Laura Miller¹, Jane Grove¹, Ana Valdes¹, Penny Gowland², Thrivikrama Shenoy⁴, and Guruprasad P Aithal^1
1NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³Metro Scan and Laboratory, Trivandrum, India, ⁴Population Health and Research Institute, Trivandrum, India, ⁵Centre for Research in the Behavioural Sciences, Nottingham University Business School, Nottingham, United Kingdom

The Indian population provides important cohorts for research into metabolic disorders due to the greater prevalence of NAFLD and diabetes, and the relatively low complexity of dietary intake. In this study 71 male participants with NAFLD were recruited from a cohort in India and randomized into two groups - a 16 week low glycaemic index dietary intervention arm and a control arm. 1H MRS was used to assess liver fat fractions, alongside other metabolic markers. Results show a trend towards reduced fat fractions in the diet arm only.

Stephen Bawden^1,2, Scott Willis³, Aron Sherry³, Penny Gowland², James King³, and Guruprasad P Aithal^1
1NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom

1H MRS offers unique insights into hepatic lipid composition. In this study, NAFLD patients with and without Type 2 Diabetes were scanned and hepatic lipid composition indices measured. Diabetic patients then underwent a randomized controlled trial to investigate the effectiveness of 6 weeks moderate exercise vs control. Lipid composition indices were similar to previous studies in obesity, and show no differences in diabetic v non-diabetic groups. The intervention also shows no change in hepatic fat fraction or lipid composition.

Laura Watson¹, Katie Carr¹, Claire Adams², Jieniean Worsley¹, Krishna K Chatterjee^1,2, Leanne Hodson³, Chris Boesch⁴, Graham J Kemp⁵, David B Savage², and Alison Sleigh^1,2,6
1National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Clinical Research Facility, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom, ²Metabolic Research Laboratories, Wellcome Trust-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, ³Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM), University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, ⁴Department of Clinical Research and Radiology, AMSM, University Bern, Bern, Switzerland, ⁵Department of Musculoskeletal Biology, and MRC-Arthritis Research UK Centre for Integrated research into Musculoskeletal Ageing (CIMA), University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom, ⁶Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

In females the accumulation of saturated IMCL is more strongly associated with whole-body insulin resistance than IMCL concentration alone. Using a recently-validated ¹H MRS approach we studied both the IMCL composition and concentration independent of composition in 30 control males, 41 age- and BMI-matched female controls and 16 female insulin resistant lipodystrophic subjects. We demonstrate that in both males and females markers reflecting the accumulation of saturated IMCL are more strongly associated with whole-body insulin sensitivity than IMCL concentration alone. 

 

Deanne Lister¹, Prodromos Parasoglou², Andrew Baik², Katherine Cygnar², Aris Economides², Brendan Cook¹, Sven Macholl¹, and Patrick McConville^1
1Molecular Imaging Center, Invicro, A Konica Minolta Company, La Jolla, CA, United States, ²Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Tarrytown, NY, United States

Pompe disease is a debilitating condition that results in abnormally high tissue glycogen concentrations and is the subject of significant therapeutic focus by the pharma industry, including promising gene therapies. Non-invasive biomarkers that are specific and sensitive are sought after to address major gaps in early phase clinical trials. We characterized 13C MRS measurements of muscle glycogen concentration as potential biomarkers in Pompe disease, including test/re-test measurements and correlation with tissue biochemical measurements. Strong specificity and reasonable reproducibility was found, suggesting potential for 13C MRS to be used in Pompe disease patients.

Rajiv G Menon¹, Dimitri Martel¹, Nosirudeen Quadri², Charlotte Detremmerie², Laura Frye², Ann Marie Schmidt², Ravichandran Ramasamy², and Ravinder R Regatte^1
1Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY, United States, ²Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Department of Medicine, New York University Langone Health, New York, NY, United States

Diabetes Mellitus causes systemic changes in a number of metabolites in multiple organs. Previous studies have shown that RAGE and its cytoplasmic domain partner Diaph1 are key mediators of metabolic and functional changes in diabetic mice. The goal of this study was to use ¹H-MRS and CSE-MRI to investigate the metabolite and water-fat fraction changes in the liver and heart in wild type (WT), WT-diabetic (WT-DM) mice, and DIAPH1 knockout diabetic (DIAPH1 KO-DM) mice. The metabolite levels and water-fat distribution in the three cohorts suggest that DIAPH1 KO-DM mice, despite being diabetic, experience a protective effect owing to DIAPH1 deletion.

Venkatesh Gopalan¹, Kavita Kaur¹, Jadegoud Yaligar¹, Sanjay Kumar Verma¹, Rengaraj Anantharaj¹, Le Thi Thu Giang¹, and S Sendhil Velan^1
1Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Singapore BioImaging Consortium,A*STAR Research Entities, Singapore, Singapore

There is a large interest in development of non-invasive methods for activation of brown adipose tissue (BAT) due to its potential to combat obesity.  Exercise is a non-pharmacological strategy to combat obesity by increasing EE. In this study we have investigated exercise induced BAT activation, heat and RER in sedentary and exercise groups. Our results show that exercise activates the brown fat with reduction in fat fraction, increased heat and RER.  UCP1 expression shows that reduction in “white” like adipocytes in exercise group.

Stefan Ruschke¹, Dominik Weidlich¹, Julius Honecker ², Claudine Seeliger², Josef Ecker³, Olga Prokopchuk⁴, Hans Hauner², and Dimitrios C Karampinos^1
1Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, School of Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, ²Else Kröner Fresenius Center for Nutritional Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany, ³ZIEL Institute for Food & Health, Research Group Lipid Metabolism, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany, ⁴Department of Surgery, Klinikum rechts der Isar, School of Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

There is a growing interest in utilizing single-voxel $$$^1$$$H MR spectroscopy (MRS) for probing the triglyceride fatty acid composition by means of the number of double bounds (ndb) and number of methylene interrupted double bounds (nmidb) per triglyceride as well as the mean fatty acid carbon chain length (CL). The present study investigates the in vitro measurement agreement of fatty acid composition parameters between single-voxel multi-TE and short-TR multi-TI multi-TE (SHORTIE) STEAM spectroscopy and the gold standard gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in human subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue samples.

Chuanli Cheng¹, Qian Wan¹, Yangzi Qiao¹, Min Pan², Changjun Tie¹, Hairong Zheng¹, Xin Liu¹, and Chao Zou^1
1Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China, ²Shenzhen Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen, China

Cold exposure is the commonly used method in evaluating the brown adipose tissue (BAT) activation. In this study, the heat production capacity of BAT in rats housed at different ambient temperatures were evaluated using magnetic resonance thermometry after injecting norepinephrine (NE). The results show that the rats housed at lower ambient temperature (15°C) for 2 weeks have surprisingly lower temperature rise after NE injection, implying that long-term cold exposed rats have lower heat production capacity after drug activation.

Anshuman Panda¹, Justin Yu¹, Michael Schwartz¹, Helen Looker², Robert Nelson², Kelly Smith¹, Aidan McGirr¹, Sophia Fasani¹, Sukhdeep Singh¹, Kristina Flicek¹, and Alvin Silva^1
1Mayo Clinic Arizona, Scottsdale, AZ, United States, ²National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States

The purpose of this pilot study is to determine technical feasibility and correlate MR Elastography (MRE) and Proton Density Fat Fraction (PDFF) with gold standard assessments of glomerular function and histopathology markers. 

Di Wu¹, Jiachen Ji², Shenghong Ju¹, and Rui Li^2
1Department of Radiology, Zhong Da Hospital,Southeast Univ., Nanjing, China, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for Biomedical Imaging Research,Tsinghua Univ., Beijing, China

The aim of this study is to identify the abdominal blood flow curve characteristics of patients with type2 diabetes using advanced 4D Flow MRI, compared with the healthy subjects. Left and right renal arteries as well as splenic artery were visualized and quantified by dedicated software. The characteristics of flow curves showed significant differences in the skewness and time to peak, which may indicate the variation in renal progression rates and become promising non-invasive biomarkers of the T2DM function assessment.

Shifeng Tian^1,2, Ailian Liu², Jiazheng Wang³, and Liangjie Lin^3
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ³Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

T2 mapping is a novel MRI sequence that enables quantitative assessment of various diseases. However, its potential for diagnosis of endometrium diseases has not been explored,andit may also help differential diagnosisof endometrial carcinoma and endometrial polyp.In this study, the T2mapping was used for quantitative analyses of endometrial carcinoma and endometrial polyp. Results shown that endometrial carcinoma was associated with significant higher T2 values than endometrial polyp, therefore, it is feasible to use T2 mapping for discrimination of endometrial carcinoma and endometrial polyp.

Xing Meng¹, Ailian Liu ¹, Shifeng Tian¹, Zhiwei Shen², Yaxin Niu¹, Wan Dong¹, Zhongping Zhang², and Yishi Wang^2
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

Amide proton transfer (APT) and mDixon - Quant techniques have been applied in clinical work, but few studies have been conducted in female pelvic system. We discussed the value of APT combined with R2^* in differentiating endometrial cancer from benign endometrial lesions. The AUC, sensitivity and specificity of APT combined R2^* were 0.925, 88% and 100%, respectively.

Xing Meng¹, Ailian Liu ¹, Shifeng Tian¹, Zhiwei Shen², Tianjing Zhang², Yishi Wang², Yaxin Niu¹, and Wan Dong^1
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

Amide proton transfer (APT) combined with intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) has been preliminarily applied in the diagnosis and differentiation of cervical squamous cell carcinoma, but has not been in the identification of endometrial lesions. We discussed the value of APT combined with IVIM in differentiating endometrial carcinoma from endometrial benign lesions. The AUC, sensitivity and specificity of APT combined IVIM were 0.979, 87.5% and 100%, respectively.

Cong Sun¹, Yufan Chen¹, Jinxia Zhu², and Guangbin Wang^1
1Shandong Medical Imaging Research Institute, Shandong University, Jinan, China, ²MR Collaboration, Healthcare Siemens Ltd., Beijing, China, Beijing, China

We compared ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the detection of fetal corpus callosum (CC) dysplasia in 375 fetuses at our Institute. The results showed that MRI was significantly better than ultrasound in being able to diagnose normal and abnormal fetal CC. Also, fetal MRI can be helpful in assessing associated abnormalities and enhancing prognostic consultations.

Nada Mufti^1,2,3, Michael Ebner^2,3, Lucas Fidon², Dimitra Flouri^2,3, Riine Heinsalu², Tom Vercauteren^2,4, Sebastien Ourselin², Luc De Catte⁴, Jan Deprest^1,4, Anna L David^1,4, Philippe Demaerel⁵, Andrew Melbourne^2,3, and Michael Aertsen^5
1Institute for Women's Health and Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom, ²School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences (BMEIS), King's College London, London, United Kingdom, ³Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom, ⁴Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospitals Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, ⁵Department of Radiology, University Hospitals Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Thorough assessment of the fetal central nervous system is required to select the most suitable candidates for fetal spina bifida surgery, and for post-operative monitoring to predict outcome. Children with myelomeningocele exhibit difficulties in cognitive performance, and motor skills¹. This is related to the Chari II malformation and ventriculomegaly^2,3. Our aim is to determine if MRI technology can quantify volume, surface area, and shape of cerebral structures before and after fetal spina bifida surgery. We explore if these parameters can be used as potential biomarkers for efficacy of fetal surgery by correlating with herniation level.

Xianyun Cai¹, Guangbin Wang², and Jinxia Zhu^3
1radiology, Shandong Medical Imaging Research Institute, Shandong University, jinan, China, ²Shandong Medical Imaging Research Institute, Shandong University, jinan, China, ³MR Collaboration, Siemens Healthcare Ltd., beijing, China

This study explored the scanning strategy of fetal spine imaging using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) on 315 volunteer pregnant subjects. Whole-spine MRI was performed on fetuses using Susceptibility-Weighted Imaging (SWI) and True Fast Imaging with Steady-state Precession (TrueFISP) sequences. Images from both methods were acquired, and the diagnostic efficacy was compared. The SWI showed superior performance in visualizing osseous spinal anomalies, while TrueFISP better presented spinal canal contents lesions. Additionally, the MRI was preferred for the diagnosis of fetal spinal diseases to US. These mixed results suggest that a combination of both techniques is appropriate for fetal spine imaging.

George Hutchinson¹, Neele Dellschaft¹, Simon Shah², Nia Jones³, Lopa Leach⁴, and Penny Gowland^1
1SPMIC, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Kings College London, London, United Kingdom, ³Queens Medical Centre, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ⁴School of Life Sciences, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Little is known about maternal venous return from the placenta, despite the fact this good venous drainage is critical for adequate flow into, and percolation through the placenta. In this abstract we aim to identify and characterise venous return by identifying regions of blood flowing across the placental wall, and we find similar velocities of blood flow entering and leaving the placenta.

Feifei Qu¹, Edgar Hernandez-Andrade², Julio Marin-Concha³, Swati Mody⁴, Pavan Jella¹, Roberto Romero^3,5,6, and E. Mark Haacke^1,7,8
1Department of Radiology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, United States, ²Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, United States, ³Perinatology Research Branch, NICHD/NIH/DHHS, Detroit, MI, United States, ⁴Department of Radiology, Children Hospital of Michgan, Detroit, MI, United States, ⁵Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, ⁶Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States, ⁷Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States, ⁸The MRI Institute for Biomedical Research, Bingham Farms, MI, United States

Healthy growth and function of the placenta are important to support normal fetal development throughout the second and third trimester. T₂* values affected by the tissue oxygenation could be a valuable tool to detect the placenta function. In this work, we collected T₂* map for both health pregnancy and the pregnancy complicated by IUGR at different GA at 3.0 T and also investigated the relationship between them.

Matthias R Muehler¹, Ante Zhu^1,2, Oliver Wieben^1,2,3, Diego Hernando^1,2,3,4, Dinesh Shah⁵, and Scott B. Reeder^1,2,3,6,7
1Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁶Emergency Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁷Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States

In preeclampsia, the erythropoetin level in the fetus has been reported to be moderately elevated and the number of erythroid cells in the fetal liver reduced. Assessment of fetal liver health and function over gestation, including hepatic hematopoiesis, is of great interest. T₂^* relaxometry is an emerging quantitative biomarker of liver iron content. In this study, we assessed fetal liver T₂^* in the midtrimester pregnancy. A fetal liver T₂^* of 22ms and 25ms at 14 and 20 weeks of gestation, respectively, was observed at 1.5T. T₂^* values are significantly correlated with gestational age but not with obesity or mothers’ age.

Hannah Grace Williams¹, Andrew Cooper¹, Lesley Hodgen², Catriona Hussain², Nia Jones³, and Penny Gowland^1
1Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Queens Medical Centre, NUH NHS Trust, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Dystocia, difficult birth due to either a big baby, small maternal pelvis, or malposition of the presenting part is an important obstetric problem and a major cause of emergency caesarean section and birth injury.  The risk of caesarean section is 30% for first time mothers who have had their labour induced.  We have developed an MRI protocol to assess fetal size and maternal pelvic measurements in supine and upright positions to determine whether they can be used as a predictor of a woman's risk of emergency C-section after the induction of labour. 

Ante Zhu^1,2, Jitka Starekova², Tom Batan³, Kevin Johnson^2,4, Scott B. Reeder^1,2,4,5,6, Oliver Wieben^1,2,4, Dinesh Shah⁷, and Diego Hernando^1,2,4,8
1Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Emergency Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁶Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁷Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁸Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Maternal obesity is associated with increased risk of gestational hypertension, preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction, complications related to reduced uteroplacental blood flow and placental vascularity malformation. T₂^* measurements of blood oxygen level-dependent effects have promise for assessing placental function. Here, we measured placental T₂^* in non-obese and obese pregnant women at 14 and 20 weeks of gestation. Our study showed that the range of placental T₂^* is similar between the two populations at both gestation ages. Trends of decreased and increased placental T₂^* with gestation were observed in different subjects, suggesting longitudinal changes in placental T₂^* may vary among subjects. 

Pei-Hsin Wu¹, Michael C. Langham¹, Ana E. Rodríguez-Soto¹, Eileen Hwuang², Felix W. Wehrli¹, and Nadav Schwartz^3
1Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ²Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ³Maternal Child Health Research Center, Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and preeclampsia (PEC) have been associated with increased perinatal morbidity and mortality. Umbilical vein (UV) blood flow reflects the efficiency of fetoplacental circulation. The hypothesis that UV blood flow rate (BFR) is lower in abnormal pregnancies (e.g. IUGR, PEC) was investigated. The results show 1) a high correlation in UV BFR between MR and ultrasound confirms the utility of PC-MRI, and 2) a lower MR-based UV BFR, found in the adverse composite birth outcome group as compared to normal subjects, suggests that UV flow may be a significant clinical indicator of adverse pregnancy outcomes. 

Yamin Arefeen¹, Borjan Gagoski^2,3, Esra Turk^2,3, Ellen Grant^2,3, Jacob White¹, Kawin Setsompop^3,4,5, and Elfar Adalsteinsson^1,5,6
1Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ²Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ³Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ⁴Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, United States, ⁵Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ⁶Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Cambridge, MA, United States

Fetal MRI utilizes Half-Fourier-acquisition-single-shot-turbo-spin-echo (HASTE) for rapid T2-weighted imaging to mitigate motion. However, T2-decay and partial fourier induce blurring, while refocusing trains extend total acquisition time due to specific absorption rate (SAR) constraints.  Variable flip angles (VFA) with full Fourier acquisitions have been shown to improve image quality, maintain contrast, and accelerate acquisition through SAR reduction. We combine nonlinear reconstruction, VFA, and full Fourier undersampling to improve sharpness and reduce SAR while maintaining similar contrast to HASTE.  Simulation and phantom experiments illustrate improved sharpness. Preliminary, in-vivo fetal results demonstrate improved sharpness and SAR with slight tradeoffs in contrast and SNR.

Mengyan Hou¹, Dongming Han¹, and Kaiyu Wang^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital，Xinxiang Medical, Xinxiang, China, ²GE Healthcare, MR Research China, Beijing, China

This study aims to compare the performances of APT, DWI, and DKI in estimating histological grading of cervical squamous carcinoma. We find that the parameter MTRasym of APT and the parameter MK and MD of DKI are helpful for the differentiation diagnosis of cervical squamous cell carcinoma. Compared with  DWI and DKI, APT is more effective in identifying the histological grades of cervical squamous carcinoma, and the combination of APT and DWI parameters can greatly improve diagnostic effect.

Peiwen Sun¹, Junheng Li¹, Meiying Zeng¹, Shuai Wang¹, Diru Zhu¹, Jilei Zhang², and Binghui Zhao*^1
1Department of Radiology, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital of Tongji University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China, ²Clinical Science, Philips Healthcare, Shanghai, China

Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic inflammatory bowel disorder that can occur in any section of the gastrointestinal tract, commonly affecting the small intestine, especially the ileum. Colonoscopy used as the gold standard for assessing disease activity, but its invasiveness limits the use. We aimed to assess inflammatory activity of CD patients by using Intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted imaging (IVIM-DWI), and found IVIM-DWI may serve as a promising method for noninvasive detecting and monitoring the activity of CD.

zheng xian ying¹ and Zhang Zhong shuai^2
1First affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, fuzhou, China, ²MR , Siemens Healthcare, Shanghai, China

This study aimed to demonstrate that Magnetic resonance enterography global score (MEGS) shows equally values in pediatric crohn's patients and had comparable diagnostic efficacy comparing with other MRE scores. 52 juvenile Crohn patients were included, and MEGS, SES-CD and eAIS of the terminal ileum were calculated. The results show that for both endoscopically defined and histologically defined active inflammation and ulcerative lesions MEGS have high diagnostic accuracy, are consisting with other studies. The results provided in the current study suggest that MR may be considered as an alternative to endoscopy.

Liangliang Yan¹ and Jinrong Qu^1
1Radiology, Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

Multiple MR quantitative parameters are associated with E-cadherin expression, and Ktrans 75% is the optimal parameter to evaluate the invasion of gastric cancer. In addition, our study also determine the specific boundary range of Ktrans 75%, Ktrans mean, and Ve mean to predict whether E-cadherin expression has decreased or absented, which provides a new method to early evaluate gastric cancer invasion.

Iyad Naim^1,2, Gordon Moran², Penny Gowland^1,2, Caroline Hoad^1,2, E Simpson ^2,3, and Jordan McGing^2
1Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Physics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Nottingham Digestive Disease Biomedical Research Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³Metabolic and Molecular Physiology, School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, Queen's Medical Centre Campus, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Crohn’s disease (CD) is an inflammatory bowel disease which effects 150k people in the UK alone. Visceral fat hypertrophy is a characteristic radiological finding in CD.To date radiologists just describe it but are not able to provide more objective data regarding visceral fat volume. In this retrospective study we used 2-point mDixon fat Images along with image processing techniques to study visceral fat properties in CD patients compared with healthy volunteers. The data demonstrated a tendency of CD patients to have a higher ratio of visceral fat and more volume of intestines fully surrounded by fat compared with healthy volunteers.

Carlos Bilreiro¹, Francisca F. Fernandes¹, Rui V. Simões¹, Celso Matos¹, and Noam Shemesh^1
1Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal

Bowel movement is a source of motion artifacts in mouse abdominal MRI. This work aimed to evaluate fasting and hyoscine butilbromide (Buscopan^®) for its reduction. Thirteen mice were imaged in a 9.4T MRI scanner with a FLASH sequence for 90 minutes (~19s temporal resolution): 6 were injected with a Buscopan^® bolus, 4 with a bolus and constant infusion, and 3 were food deprived. A single bolus of Buscopan^® was effective for bowel movement reduction in mice, for up to 1h, whereas other methods were not effective. These data favor the use of Buscopan^® for abdominal MRI in the mouse.

TAO SONG^1
1radiology, Henan Cancer Hospital, Zhengzhou, China

Preoperative assessment of intravoxel incoherent motion in clinicopathologic features of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. the uploaded file includes objective,method,results,conclusion,references, acknowledgements and figure.

Hannah Grace Williams¹, Adelaide Jewell², Caroline Hoad^1,3, Luca Marciani^3,4, Snow Stolnik-Trenkic², Pavel Gershkovich², and Penny Gowland^1
1Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham University Hospital and University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ⁴Nottingham Digestive Disease Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

It has been shown previously that lipophilic (lipid soluble) drugs administered in lipid-based formulations (or using lipophilic prodrugs) can be delivered in very high concentrations to the intestinal lymphatics. In order for the intestinal lymphatic targeting to be clinically relevant, the response of intestinal lymph following oral administration of lipids needs to be investigated in humans. This is the first study we are aware of using MRI to study changes in lymph nodes following the consumption of a fatty meal. With optimisation this method could provide a novel marker of which nodes could be target for treatment using lipophilic drugs.

bingbing gao¹, yanwei miao¹, ailian liu¹, jiazheng wang², zhiwei shen², jianqing sun², qingwei song¹, and nan zhang^1
1first Affiliated hospital of Dalian medical university, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China, Beijing, China

The purpose of this study was to evaluate image quality of diffusion weighted whole body Imaging with background body signal suppression (DWIBS) sequence using different b values (b=0,800 and b=0,800,1500) for predicting tumor or tumorlike lesions in abdomen. The results showed index ADC image with b=0,800 depicted more lesions than b=0,1500, including false positive lesions. The ADC value of b=0,800, 1500 is less than that of b=0, 800, indicating tumor’s precise ADC value is lower than we thought before.

Anugayathri Jawahar¹, Perla Subbaiah ², and Vipul R Sheth ^1
1Body MRI, Stanford University, PALO ALTO, CA, United States, ²Mathematics, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, United States

Pelvic floor dysfunction affects about half of women over 50 years of age,  causing significant morbidity. MR defecography compliments the clinical examination in the evaluation of pelvic floor dysfunction. We investigated if the measurement of levator hiatus width is a useful and reliable supplement or alternative measurement in predicting pelvic floor dysfunction. We retrospectively reviewed MR defecography examinations and recalculated the levator hiatus width and the anorectal angle with 2 blinded readers. We found that the levator hiatus width had a statistically significant correlation with pelvic organ prolapse and can add to the confidence in reporting H-line and M-line abnormalities.  

Ali Alyami^1,2,3, Caroline Hoad ^2,4, Ross Little⁵, Konstantinos Argyriou⁴, Uday Bannur⁶, Khalid Latief⁶, Christopher Clarke⁶, Phillip Lung⁷, Michael Berks⁵, Susan Cheung⁵, James PB O'Connor^5,8, Geoff JM Parker^9,10, Penny Gowland², and Gordon W. Moran^1,4
1Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, Diagnostic Radiology, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia, ⁴NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and University of Nottingham, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ⁵Quantitative Biomedical Imaging Laboratory, Division of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, ⁶Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Radiology, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ⁷St Mark's Hospital and London North West Healthcare NHS Trust, Radiology, London, United Kingdom, ⁸Radiotherapy Related Research, Division of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, ⁹Bioxydyn Limited, Manchester, United Kingdom, ¹⁰Centre for Medical Image Computing, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Perianal Crohn’s disease (pCD) is a potential complication of CD patients. Disease monitoring is imprecise due to unreliable clinical scores and subjective radiological reporting. Quantitative MRI sequences, e.g. diffusion-weighted image (DWI), dynamic contrast enhancement (DCE), magnetization transfer (MT) and T2 relaxometry offer opportunities to improve diagnostic capability. This study aimed to attain pilot data regarding the diagnostic utility of these sequences before and after 12 weeks of biological treatment in active pCD.  Significant negative correlation was found between MTR and T2, MTR and DCE parameter k^trans and MTR with apparent diffusion coefficient, reflecting competing disease effects of inflammation and fibrosis.

Ali Saleh Alyami^1,2,3, Hannah Grace Williams², Konstantinos Argyriou⁴, Penny Gowland^2,4, Gordon W. Moran^1,4, and Caroline Hoad ^2,4
1Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, Diagnostic Radiology, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia, ⁴NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and University of Nottingham, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Quantitative MRI datasets based on relaxometry and Magnetisation Transfer (MT) sequences could be used as potential biomarkers of disease activity in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The aim of the study was to measure the repeatability of T2, T1 and MT small bowel measurements following bowel preparation and administration of an anti-spasmodic agent. Inter-observer variations in these measurements were also assessed. The quantitative MRI methods examined showed excellent repeatability for T2 and good repeatability for T1 parameters for both repeatability between visits and reproducibility of results between observers from data of a small group of healthy subjects.

Yubo Liu¹, Ximing Wang¹, Xianshun Yuan¹, Haiyan Jing², Xiankui Cheng², Liang Shang³, Jinglei Liu³, Mengxiao Liu⁴, and Xiang Feng^5
1Department of Radiology, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Jinan, China, ²Department of Pathology, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Jinan, China, ³Department of gastrointestinal surgery, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Jinan, China, ⁴MR Scientific Marketing, Diagnostic Imaging, Siemens Healthcare Ltd, shanghai, China, ⁵MR Scientific Marketing, Diagnostic Imaging, Siemens Healthcare Ltd, Beijing, China

For gastric antrum cancer with obstructive symptoms, CT has been a common method for preoperative diagnosis. But because it shows poor tumor boundaries, it does not give clear guidance on treatment options. ZOOMit DWI has higher image quality and smaller deformations make tumor boundaries better, so it can provide better preoperative guidance.

Samantha Paterson¹, William Holmes¹, Linda Carberry¹, and Jean Rodgers^1
1University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Splenomegaly is a symptom of the African parasitic disease, sleeping sickness. This study is the first research to demonstrate splenomegaly non-invasively in a murine model of sleeping sickness. This researched showed an increase in the size of the spleen of over 20 times the healthy volume during the late stage of the disease whilst also demonstrating a change in the rate of increase during different stages of the disease. Overall, new information about splenomegaly in sleeping sickness has been demonstrated for the first time.

Arnold Julian Vinoj Benjamin¹, Mary A McClean¹, Joshua D Kaggie¹, Lucian Beer¹, Frank Riemer², Rolf F Schulte³, Titus Lanz⁴, Martin J Graves⁵, and Ferdia A Gallagher^1
1Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, ²Department of Radiology, Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway, ³GE Global Research, Munich, Germany, ⁴RAPID Biomedical GmbH, Rimpar, Germany, ⁵Department of Radiology, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom

In this study, we report sodium T2* values and total sodium concentration (TSC) values in healthy volunteers in the abdomen using a large field-of-view (FOV) birdcage sodium body coil that provides a uniform excitation over the whole abdomen.  We explore whether sodium will be more specific to the BOLD effect, as sodium is a major component of blood and oxygenation of this blood will affect the sodium T2* values directly.

Xueyin Liao¹, Yu Chen², Xiaoqi Wang³, Mingyong Yang¹, and Huadan Xue^2
1Plastic Surgery Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Union Medical Collage, Beijing, China, ²Department of Radiology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China, ³Philips HealthCare, Beijing, China

We have investigated the clinical feasibility of applying MRI to predict the fat survival rate of autologous fat transplantation on faces 7 days after surgery. High resolution T1W and T2W fat-only images, T2 mapping, IVIM diffusion, and spectroscopy methods were implemented. The morphological images provided extradentary value in visualizing transplanted fat in vivo, the biomarker T2 mapping identified edema, IVIM measured perfusion and localized rebuilding vascularization, and MRS quantified lactate content for predicting post-op fat survival rate. The non-contrast MRI technologies proved values in imaging for autologous fat transplantation surgery.

Cuiling Zhu¹, Yihao Guo², Wenbin Si², Yingjie Mei³, Qiaoling Zhong¹, Lijie Zhong¹, Yanqiu Feng², and Xiaodong Zhang^1
1Department of Radiology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ²School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ³Philips Healthcare, Guangzhou, China

Activated and inactivated brown adipose tissue showed some differences in function, protein expression and intracellular components, which remained non-invasive MRI testing possible. Despite its strong relevance with iron contents, QSM detect BAT in large lipid depots remains a major challenge. This work proposes a method that use values of QSM and (fat fraction) FF to quantitatively distinguish the two groups in brown adipose tissue depot in vivo, histological validation is then performed. Preliminary results are broadly in line with expectation.

Yajing Zhang¹ and Hanlin Fu^1
1Philips Healthcare, Suzhou, China

Contrast-enhanced MR scans have been commonly used in the diagnosis of liver lesions. However, it has limited use to the patients allergic to the contrast agent. Recently, there are increasing concerns about the safety of the use of Gadolinium-based contrast agents. In this study, we employed a cycle generative adversarial network strategy to test the feasibility of predicting the contrast enhancement images in liver MRI.

Philipp Madörin¹, Xeni Deligianni^1,2, Francesco Santini^1,2, Simon Andermatt², Philippe Claude Cattin², Anne Christin Meyer-Gerspach^3,4, Bettina Karin Wölnerhanssen^3,4, Oliver Bieri^1,2, and Orso Pusterla^1,2,5
1Department of Radiology, Division of Radiological Physics, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland, ³St. Clara Research Ltd, St. Clara Hospital, Basel, Switzerland, ⁴University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland, ⁵Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Obesity is one of the greatest health risks and strongly related to fatty liver disease. Magnetic resonance imaging enables non-invasive measurement of fat-water distribution in tissue. To provide an automated evaluation of the liver volume and fat percentage, we trained a Multi-Dimensional Gated Recurrent Units network to segment multi-contrast data. The neural network was trained with a limited number of data comprising 52, 20, 10 datasets and was evaluated for liver volume and fat percentage quantification.

Asha K Kumaraswamy^1,2, Punith B Venkategowda¹, Chandrashekar M. Patil², and Robert Grimm^3
1Siemens Healthcare Private Limited, Bengaluru, India, ²Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering, Mysuru, India, ³MR Application Predevelopment, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

Whole body diffusion-weighted MR imaging is a promising technique for the evaluation of bone metastases e.g. in prostate and breast cancer. Segmenting and quantifying tumor burden and treatment response based on DWI and corresponding ADC has been proposed previously. However, treatment effects may influence the actual segmentation and signal intensities. Here, a more reproducible approach would be preferred for segmenting and analyzing consistent regions of interest also in follow-up examinations. We present a deep learning method for automatic bone segmentation, based on T1-weighted imaging or DWI. Feasibility of the new approach is shown, resulting in significantly reduction in computation time.

Ying Xia¹, Pierrick Bourgeat¹, Samantha Burnham¹, and Jurgen Fripp^1
1The Australian eHealth Research Centre, CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, Brisbane, Australia

Quantitative assessment of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) is important in studies of obesity and metabolic abnormalities. The study developed and evaluated an unsupervised method for abdominal adipose tissue quantification in a large sample from the general population. The results revealed strong correlations with reference measures using dual energy X-ray and MR based methods with human intervention. We also demonstrate the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and adipose tissue compartments. As expected, BMI did not fully reflect fat accumulation in VAT. With increasing BMI, males were more likely to have higher VAT accumulation than females.

Ramin Jafari^1,2, Pascal Spincemaille², Thanh D. Nguyen², Junghun Cho^1,2, Martin R. Prince², and Yi Wang^1,2
1Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States, ²Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, United States

A single breath-hold 3D GRE acquisition with tens of seconds is used to acquire data for water/fat separation and QSM generation in liver. However, in elderly and paediatric patients long breath-holds are not feasible. Compressed sensing along with Deep Learning is an alternative to shorten the scan time and perform reconstruction on undersampled data. In this work we compare how undersampling GRE data at different rates and use of Deep Learning for reconstruction will affect the water/fat separation and QSM results.

Reza Kalantar¹, Jessica M Winfield^1,2, Christina Messiou^1,3, Dow-Mu Koh^1,3, and Matthew D Blackledge^1
1Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom, ²The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, United Kingdom, ³Department of Radiology, The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, United Kingdom

The MR-Linac exploits excellent soft-tissue contrast of MRI images with the option of daily re-planning for irradiation of pelvic tumours. However, this requires significant clinician interaction as contours need manual redefining for each radiotherapy fraction. Recently, machine learning-based segmentation approaches are being developed to automate this process. One major limitation of this approach is the lack of available fully-annotated MRI data for training. In this study, a deep learning model was developed and trained on CT/MR registered images of 21 patient datasets, generating synthetic T₁-weighted MR images from input CT data, which could be useful towards disease segmentation on MRI.

Charles E Hill^1,2, Ferenc Emil Mozes², Liam AJ Young², Luca Biasiolli², Matthew D Robson³, and Vicente Grau^1
1Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, ²Oxford Centre for Magnetic Resonance Research (OCMR), University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, ³Perspectum Diagnostics LTD., Oxford, United Kingdom

Quantitative Liver T₁ mapping techniques are becoming more prevalent in the clinic, for the diagnosis and prognosis of various liver diseases. However, time pressure and technique complexity can often lead to incorrect acquisition due to sub-optimal slice location. We implement a faster Region Proposal CNN for the detection of multiple organs in the body, and report back the findings promptly via a local user interface, to inform the radiographers if they need to re-acquire. We show that this network has a high localisation accuracy and high speed, such that it will be applicable in the clinical environment.

Jingbiao Chen^1,2, Yunyi Kang³, Feng Ju³, Jiahui Li¹, Jie Chen¹, Xin Lu¹, Richard L Ehman¹, Vijay H Shah², and Meng Yin^1
1Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States, ²Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States, ³School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States

Non-invasively diagnosing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and predicting disease prognosis in individual patients are two main unmet clinical needs. There are very few longitudinal studies that evaluate imaging, biochemical, and histopathological variables that predict disease progression of NAFLD. This study established a multi-state Hidden Markov model (HMM) of NAFLD evolution in an animal model with three imaging biomarkers: MRI derived proton density fat fraction (PDFF) and MR elastography (MRE) assessed liver stiffness (LS) and loss modulus (LM). Results have shown that a 3-state HMM can well characterize the natural history of NAFLD, and predict disease progression or regression.

Alan B McMillan¹, Lloyd Estowski², Ty A Cashen², R. Marc Lebel³, Xinzeng Wang⁴, Ersin Bayram⁴, and Ali Pirasteh^1
1Radiology, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Global MR Applications & Workflow, GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, United States, ³Global MR Applications & Workflow, GE Healthcare, Calgary, AB, Canada, ⁴Global MR Applications & Workflow, GE Healthcare, Houston, TX, United States

We present a single-shot fast-spin-echo pulse-sequence (SSFSE) with short-tau inversion recovery (STIR) and deep-learning (DL) image reconstruction that provides whole-body images in less than 3 minutes, achieving uniform fat suppression, detailed delineation of the anatomy, and favorable signal-to-noise (SNR). This was achieved through the reduction of echo-train-length by increasing the acceleration to a factor of 4x, hence substantially improving image quality through blurring reduction in the phase encoding direction, and ameliorating the subsequent SNR reductions by utilization of a DL reconstruction algorithm. This whole-body MRI technique can be used in the setting of various pathologies for both pediatrics and adults.

Johannes M Peeters¹ and Marcel Breeuwer^1,2
1MR Clinical Science, Philips, Best, Netherlands, ²Biomedical Engineering – Medical Image Analysis, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Breath holding is often applied for abdominal imaging to avoid motion artifacts. However, breath holding limits the acquisition time and thus the resolution of the images. We propose to use 3D super resolution deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) to enhance the sharpness of 3D mDixon MRI. We found that sharpness increases with increasing number of network layers, but levels off already at 6 layers.

Motohide Kawamura¹, Daiki Tamada¹, Tetsuya Wakayama², Hiroshi Onishi¹, and Utaroh Motosugi^1
1Department of Radiology, University of Yamanashi, Yamanashi, Japan, ²MR Collaboration and Development, GE Healthcare, Tokyo, Japan

Motion artifact is a problem in abdominal imaging. Respiratory-triggering techniques are commonly used to suppress the motion artifact. However, it is not always perfect in clinical practice. Deep learning-based motion correction is an attractive solution. However, it requires pairs of images with and without motion artifacts, which is difficult in body MRI. Here, we propose a deep learning-based method to remove motion artifact using a simulation of artifacts based on a simple model for respiratory gating failure. Preliminary results showed that the proposed method can remove motion artifacts in respiratory-triggered FSE-T2WI of the liver, which were corrupted by irregular breathing.

Ken-Pin Hwang¹, Xinzeng Wang², Randy D Ernst³, Sarah M Palmquist³, Marc Lebel², Gaiane M Rauch³, George J Chang⁴, Craig Messick⁴, Melissa W Taggart⁵, Ersin Bayram², Jingfei Ma¹, and Harmeet Kaur^3
1Department of Imaging Physics, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States, ²MR Applications and Workflow, GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, United States, ³Department of Radiology, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States, ⁴Department of Surgical Oncology, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States, ⁵Department of Pathology, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States

Proper evaluation of rectal cancer with MR imaging requires high resolution imaging of the rectal wall. The image quality demands are difficult to achieve due to the increasing risk of peristaltic motion with longer scan times. In this work, we apply a novel deep learning based reconstruction (DL recon) method to an accelerated sequence using reduced averages and increased acceleration. Radiologist scores indicate that the combined method provides superior SNR and definition with less motion degradation when compared to the routine sequence with conventional reconstruction. Thus improved motion robustness can be gained from applying DL Recon to an accelerated sequence.

Feng-Mao Chiu^1,2, Ting Chun Lin¹, Queenie Chan³, Cheng-Chun Li⁴, Jen-I Hwang⁴, and You Yin Chen^1
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, ²Health system, Philips, Taipei, Taiwan, ³Healthcare, Philips, Hong Kong, China, ⁴Department of Medical Imaging, Tungs’ Taichung Metroharbor Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan

Several advanced post-processing methods were used to assess prostate cancer, including diffusion model of IVIM, T2 mapping with multi-echo turbo spin echo , and permeability analysis with Tofts model. We found that it is not easy to overcome the fitting error, and it is not reasonable to directly integrate IVIM, T2 mapping and permeability together as well. The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of the prostate cancer screening with model-free machine leaning , and to test different combinations of input data, including multiple b-value diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), multi-echo T2w TSE, and dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) images.

Yun Bian¹, Chao Ma¹, Xu Fang¹, Jin Li¹, Kai Cao¹, Li Wang¹, Jin Gang², Jianping Lu¹, and Xiangxue Wang^3
1Radiology, Changhai hospital, Shanghai, China, ²Pancreatic Surgery, Changhai hospital, Shanghai, China, ³Shanghai Institute for Advanced Communication and Data Science, School of Computer Engineering and Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

A striking number of patients are diagnosed with resectable pancreatic cancer (PC) or borderline resectable PC by computed tomography (CT) but end up with positive (R1) resection at surgery according to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) criteria. If the pathological resection margin can be accurately and noninvasively predicted prior to surgery, an appropriate treatment plan can be developed and patients with PC can avoid futile surgery. Hence, we sought to accurately identify the relationship between the arterial radiomics score (rad-score) and pathologic superior mesenteric vein (SMV) resection margin in patients with pancreatic head cancer and to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the rad-score in differentiating between negative (R0) and R1 resection. 

Yaxin Niu¹, Ailian Liu¹, Shifeng Tian¹, Lihua Chen¹, Qingwei Song¹, Jiazheng Wang², and Zhiwei Shen^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian Medical University, Da Lian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China, Beijing, China

Acquisition time is one of the main limiting factors in MRI. Compressed sensing  is an emerging technology proven to effectively shorten scan time in several clinical scenarios. Here we propose to apply a combination of compressed sensing and sensitivity encoding in 3D uterus imaging that yields 1x1x2 mm³ resolution and uncompromised image quality with 5-fold acquisition acceleration. 

Hina Arif¹, Stephane Chartier ², Tanmay Tiwari³, Bobby Kalb², and Manoj Saranathan^2
1Medical Imaging, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, ²University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, ³University of Arziona, TUCSON, AZ, United States

Uniform fat suppression is critical for optimal MR assessment of lesions in the abdomen and pelvis. Recent advances using SPAIR sequencing have improved fat suppression and increased the signal-to-noise ratio versus older techniques. However, fat suppression still remains challenging in anatomical regions away from the magnetic isocenter due to field inhomogeneity. Here we demonstrate that continuous table movement (CTM) is superior to fixed table (FT) technology for SPAIR-mediated fat suppression across the entire image stack. As field inhomogeneity away from isocenter is a common challenge, CTM may provide a solution to many frequently encountered problems.

Yuxin Zhang^1,2, Matthias Muhler¹, Ruiqi Geng^1,2, Arnaud Guidon³, and Diego Hernando^1,2
1Radiology, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Applications and Workflow, GE Healthcare, Boston, MA, United States

Conventional liver diffusion MRI acquisitions suffer from several challenges including low spatial resolution, B0-induced distortions, and elastic motion-induced signal voids. In this work, motion-robust and distortion-corrected liver diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) was enabled by combining optimized motion compensated diffusion waveforms with multi-shot EPI acquisitions. Quantitative validation of distortions and ADC measurements was performed in healthy volunteer to assess the robustness and reproducibility of the combined techniques, as well as the synergistic effect of motion-robust gradient waveform and multi-shot EPI acquisitions. Preliminary patient example demonstrated the feasibility in patients with metastatic liver lesions.

Paula Donahue¹, Rachelle Crescenzi², Chelsea Lee³, Niral J Patel³, Maria Garza², Kalen Petersen², and Manus Joseph Donahue^2
1Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ²Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ³Pediatrics, Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States

MRI methods capable of evaluating tissue changes in response to lymphatic dysfunction have not been incorporated into lymphedema diagnosis and management owing to limited clinical evaluation of these technologies. We performed quantitative relaxometry in the skin and deep tissue of patients with lymphedema and matched controls, in sequence with standard biophysical bedside measures used for lymphedema assessment. In both deep tissue and skin, T2 was elevated in patients relative to control volunteers, consistent with edema, and relaxometry values were more discriminatory for category (i.e., control versus lymphedema) compared to common bedside tools of arm volume asymmetry and tissue dielectric constant.

Melany Atkins¹ and Ersin Bayram^2
1Fairfax Radiological Consultants, Arlington, VA, United States, ²General Electric, Houston, TX, United States

Breath-held acquisitions have long been a staple of body MRI to cope with respiratory motion. While this strategy works for many patients, it is challenging for some. Change in breath-hold capacity from one patient to the next requires frequent parameter tweaking, thus operator skillset becomes a key factor in image quality and consistency. Recent advances in novel motion robust acquisition methods and improved hardware such as Air coils have opened the possibility to perform complete free breathing exams.  In this study, we report the feasibility results of free breathing integration into our routine abdominal MRI practice.   

Paul Sprenger^1,2, Kosuke Morita³, Takeshi Nakaura⁴, Masami Yoneyama⁵, Shuo Zhang^2,6, Maike Bode², Christiane K. Kuhl², and Nils A. Kraemer^2
1Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany, ²Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany, ³Kumamoto University Hospital, Kumamoto, Japan, ⁴Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan, ⁵Philips Japan, Tokyo, Japan, ⁶Philips GmbH DACH, Hamburg, Germany

Compressed sensing technologies have recently become commercially available that serve the purpose to shorten the image acquisition time for morphological imaging. Here we explore the reconstruction algorithm that allows the combination of wavelet transformation of compressed sensing with coil information of sensitivity encoding (SENSE) in body diffusion MRI based on 2D single-shot EPI and uniform undersampling, and report our results in both healthy volunteers and patients on both 3T and 1.5T, in comparison to the conventional SENSE parallel imaging technique.

Sean C Epstein¹, Timothy J. P. Bray², Margaret A. Hall-Craggs², and Hui Zhang^1
1Department of Computer Science & Centre for Medical Image Computing, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ²Centre for Medical Imaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom

This work uses the quantification of parameter-estimation uncertainty to assess the clinical suitability of IVIM acquisition schemes. We apply this analysis to two bone marrow classification tasks. We simulate IVIM data and show that fitting a simplified, biased, diffusion model (ADC), can, under certain clinically relevant conditions, outperform ground-truth IVIM fitting. We further show that, within the same disease, the opposite can also be true: IVIM outperforms ADC. Such results can play an important role in guiding clinical DWI practice and we show that they can be predicted by explicitly quantifying the uncertainty in parameter estimation.

Guifang Lin¹, Lili Wang¹, Zhongshuai Zhang², Bin Sun¹, Weiwen lin¹, Ruolan Lin¹, Jingming Chen¹, Jiangao Xie¹, Yuanfeng Liu¹, Qing Duan¹, and Yunjing Xue^1
1Department of Radiology, Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, Fuzhou, China, ²SIEMENS Healthcare, Shanghai, China

The aim of this study was to assess the liver parenchyma by evaluating the regional variability, the measurement stability and the correlations of parameters calculated from IVIM and DKI models using different ROIs. The results demonstrated that S8, S5/8, S5 and S3 delegating different level of liver tissue can be chosen as the representative area in assessing the IVIM-DKI imaging of the liver. ADC, MD, MK and D with lower deviation were suitable for the quantitative evaluation of liver tissue and can be used to reflect different sides of the microstructure of the hepatic parenchyma.

Vishnupriya Kuchana¹, Nobuhiro Fujita¹, Elina Shrestha¹, Amro Saad Aldine¹, Khalid Balawi¹, and Jinha M Park^1
1Radiology, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA, United States

Patients diagnosed with hereditary cancer syndromes (HCS) mutations are at increased risk of developing tumors. We are trying to evaluate the utility and cost-effectiveness of WB MRI for screening and monitoring adult HCS patients for new lesions (malignant or pre malignant). We retrospectively collected the data from the HCS patients who had whole-body MRI scans and are aged 18 -72 years old. Overall sensitivity and specificity of WB MRI is 100% and 87.5% and mean per patient cost responsibility per scan is $358.83 which proves WB MRI can be an effective tool for screening and surveillance of HCS patients.

Yunfei Wang¹, Chaofan Zhu¹, Dehong Luo¹, Long Qian², Yayuan Geng³, Wenming Deng¹, and Zhou Liu^1
1Radiology, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital & Shenzhen Hospi, Shenzhen, China, ²MR Research, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China, ³Huiying Medical Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing, China

It is challenging to perform diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) on thyroid gland with high quality due to susceptibility artifacts caused by complex structure compositions, and physiological motion artifacts and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using conventional head and neck joint coil. We used a histogram-based approach to evaluate the images of the small field-of-view (FOV) DWI (Focus, GE) and DWI with short-tau inversion-recovery (STIR) fat suppression using a state-of-the-art surface-coil specifically designed for thyroid gland. We found significantly different level and considerably inhomogeneity in signal intensity between right and left lobe of thyroid gland and between two DWIs.

Takeshi Yoshikawa¹, Yoshiharu Ohno², Masao Yui³, Yoshimori Kassai³, Tatsuya Ohkubo³, Shinichiro Seki⁴, Katsusuke Kyotani⁵, and Yuji Kishida^6
1Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan, ²Fujita Health University School of Medicine, Toyoake, Japan, ³Canon Medical Systems Corporation, Otawara, Japan, ⁴Hyogo Prefectural Tamba Medical Center, Tamba, Japan, ⁵Kobe University Hospital, Kobe, Japan, ⁶Konan Medical Center, Kobe, Japan

Stretched-exponential model enables diffusion analysis considering diffusion varieties in each voxel on abdominal DWI. Our study showed stretched-exponential model has a potential to increase diagnostic performance of liver DWI. Alpha has a potential to be used for malignant lesion differentiation.

Takeshi Yoshikawa¹, Yoshiharu Ohno², Masao Yui³, Yoshimori Kassai³, Tatsuya Ohkubo³, Shinichiro Seki⁴, Katsusuke Kyotani⁵, and Yuji Kishida^6
1Radiology, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan, ²Fujita Health University School of Medicine, Toyoake, Japan, ³Canon Medical Systems Corporation, Otawara, Japan, ⁴Hyogo Prefectural Tamba Medical Center, Tamba, Japan, ⁵Kobe University Hospital, Kobe, Japan, ⁶Konan Medical Center, Kobe, Japan

Stretched-exponential model enables diffusion analysis considering diffusion varieties in each voxel on abdominal DWI. Our study showed stretched-exponential model has a potential to increase diagnostic performance of pancreatic DWI. Alpha has a potential to be used for malignant lesion differentiation.

Nan Zhang¹, Qingwei Song¹, Renwang Pu¹, Jiazheng Wang², Liangjie Lin², Ailian Liu¹, and Haonan Zhang^1
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The present study aims to explore the effect of oral paramagnetic contrast agent on image quality of Diffusion weighted Whole body Imaging with Background body signal Suppression(DWIBS).This study confirmed that the oral paramagnetic contrast agent could eliminate gastrointestinal interference without affecting the diagnostic efficacy of DWIBS images.

Sean McTavish¹, Christoph Zoellner¹, Johannes M. Peeters², Omar Kamal¹, Rickmer F. Braren¹, and Dimitrios C. Karampinos^1
1Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, ²Philips Healthcare, Best, Netherlands

Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) remains a valuable tool in abdominal lesion detection. However, respiratory and cardiac motion remain major effects confounding the robustness of abdominal DWI. Respiratory triggering and prospective gating techniques are typically employed to reduce the effect of respiratory motion on abdominal DWI. However, these techniques can become either inefficient or result in artifacts in patients with irregular breathing patterns. In addition, cardiac triggering further reduces the SNR efficiency of a respiratory triggered acquisition. The purpose of the present work is to develop an algorithm for combined retrospective gating of abdominal DWI based on recorded respiratory and cardiac signals.

Stefanie Eriksson¹, Hanna Hebelka^2,3, Leif Torén^2,3, Christian Waldenberg², Helena Brisby², and Kerstin Lagerstrand^1,4
1Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden, ²Institute of Clinical Sciences, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden, ³Department of Radiology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden, ⁴Institute of Clinical Scences, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden

Texture analysis provides quantitative image analysis based on mathematically calculated features. A high number of features calculated with texture analysis showed to be significantly different between the intervertebral discs with and without annular fissuring that had been classified from CT discograms. When the features based on T2-weighted images were used for classification by "Random Forest" a very high accuracy in differentiating between discs with and without annular fissuring was achieved.

Octavia Bane^1,2, Daniel Stocker^1,2, Paul Kennedy^1,2, Stefanie Hectors^1,2,3, Susanne Schnell⁴, Scott Friedman⁵, Thomas Schiano⁵, Isabel M Fiel⁶, Swan Thung⁶, Aaron Fischman², Michael Markl^4,7, and Bachir Taouli^1,2
1BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, ²Department of Diagnostic, Molecular and Interventional Radiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, ³Department of Radiology, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, United States, ⁴Department of Radiology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States, ⁵Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, ⁶Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, ⁷Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering, Evanston, IL, United States

The purpose of our prospective study was to correlate the hepatic vasculature hemodynamic parameters measured with navigator-gated 4D flow MRI with the hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG) in patients with chronic liver disease and suspicion of portal hypertension (PH). Peak velocity in the celiac trunk (CT) was moderately correlated with HVPG, and was significantly elevated in patients with PH. CT flow was significantly elevated in patients with clinically significant PH (CSPH), while portal vein peak velocity was significantly reduced in patients with cirrhosis. Our results suggest that 4D flow MRI may be sensitive to hemodynamic changes in patients with PH. 

Bradley Bolster, Jr.¹, Stephan Kannengiesser², and Vibhas Deshpande^3
1Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT, United States, ²Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany, ³Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., Austin, TX, United States

This study demonstrates in inline implementation of a radial free breathing MRE sequence with integrating radial self gating.    Measured stiffness values are consistent across self-gating threshold values and results are in good agreement with standard breath-hold MRE techniques.

Wei Wei¹, Yan Bai¹, Xianchang Zhang², Robert Grimm³, and Meiyun Wang^1
1Department of Radiology, Henan Provincial People’s Hospital, Zhengzhou, China, ²MR Collaboration, Siemens Healthcare Ltd, Beijing, China, ³MR Application Predevelopment, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

This study aimed to investigate the utility of intra-voxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted imaging (IVIM-DWI) for monitoring the liver function change during type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) treatment. The results showed that liver fat fractions were significantly decreased and perfusion-related diffusion (D*) was significantly increased, but pure molecular diffusion (D) values showed no significant change in T2DM patients after treatment for three months. Our findings indicated that improvement of hepatic parenchymal perfusion may occur earlier than water molecule diffusion during T2DM treatment. D* may be a more sensitive biomarker than D to characterize the liver function change during T2DM treatment.

Nan Wang¹, Ailian Liu¹, Qingwei Song¹, Renwang Pu¹, Mingli Gao¹, Lihua Chen¹, Jiazheng Wang², Zhiwei Shen², and Yishi Wang^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The detection and quantification of iron depositon in cirrhotic liver are important for the diagnosis and treatment. The MR-UTE sequence has advantages in quantifying severe liver iron overload, and partially solve the problem that severe iron overload cannot be accurately quantified. mDIXON-Quant sequence could quantify liver R2* value.

Markus Karlsson¹, Jens Tellman¹, Fredrik Testud², Ning Jin³, Nils Dahlström¹, and Peter Lundberg^1
1Department of Medical and Health Sciences, and Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, ²Siemens Healthcare AB, Malmö, Sweden, ³Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc, Cleveland, OH, United States

Four-dimensional flow magnetic resonance imaging of the liver can be used to characterize the blood flow in the portal vein. This could be a useful tool to evaluate portal hypertension. However, four-dimensional flow magnetic resonance imaging typically requires a long acquisition time, which limits clinical usefulness. We therefore investigated if compressed sensing can be used to shorten the acquisition time. We found that the acquisition time could be reduced to 8-10 minutes, without impacting the flow measurements.

Shiyu Wang¹, Jiazheng Wang², Qingwei Song¹, Zhongping Zhang³, Bingbing Gao¹, Lihua Chen¹, and Ailian Liu^4
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Dalian, China, ³Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China, ⁴The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dlian, China

Image acquisition of an mDixon sequence typically requires a breath hold to minimize respiratory motion artifact. Minimization the acquisition time of mDixon could be very useful in clinical daily routine. The purpose of the study is to explore the effect of the acceleration factor on the image quality of 3D mDIXON sequence for liver imaging using Compressed SENSE . And CS acceleration factor 4 can reduce the scanning time to 10s on the premise of ensuring the image quality, which is the best scheme for clinical 3D mDixon scanning of liver.

Qinhe Zhang¹, Wan Dong¹, Yishi Wang², Jiazheng Wang², and Ailian Liu^1
1The first affiliated hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

This study measured the quantitative imaging metrics of the pancreas and correlated ADC, sADC, D*，D, f, FF and R2* of pancreas with BMI, TAT, SAT and VAT. This study viewed that there was significant relationship between R2* and VAT, TAT (r=0.495, 0.533, respectively). And, ADC was related to SAT (r=0.460). These may illustrate the impact of different fat distribution on the function of pancreas.

Xuedong Wang¹, Ailian Liu¹, Jiazheng Wang², Ke Jiang², and Anliang Chen^1
1The first affiliated hospital of dalian medical university, DaLian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, China, Beijing, China

T2 mapping is an effective sequence of MRI that enables quantitative assessment of diseases. However, currently there are few trials to confirm its feasibility in distinguishing pancreatic changes due to benign and malignant low biliary obstruction. In this experiment, we used T2 mapping to quantify these changes, and found that T2 mapping is feasible for evaluating the changes of pancreatic parenchyma due to benign and malignant low biliary obstruction. And the value of T2 mapping in malignant group is higher than that in benign group.

Xueqin ZHANG¹, Jian LU¹, Jifeng JIANG¹, and Weibo CHEN^2
1the Third People’s Hospital of Nantong, Nantong, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Shanghai, China

The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of hepatocyte fraction on Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI for the quantitative evaluation of liver function. 69 patients with cirrhosis and 22 healthy volunteers with normal liver function who underwent Gd-EOB-DTPA enhanced MRI were collected in this study. T1 mapping images were obtained by using the Look-Locker sequences before and 20 minutes after Gd-EOB-DTPA administration, hepatocyte fraction (HeF) and K_Hep were measured. Our study showed that hepatocyte fraction (HeF and K_Hep vlaues) based on Gd-EOB-DTPA- enhanced T1 mapping MRI is an efficient diagnostic tool for the quantitative evaluation of liver function.

Tao Lin¹, Ailian Liu ¹, Jiazheng Wang ², Nan Wang¹, Lihua Chen ¹, Dahua Cui¹, Ying Zhao ¹, Qingwei Song ¹, Renwang Pu ¹, Bingbing Gao¹, and Yanling Wu^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

Our work aimed to explore the value of amide proton transfer-weighted (APTw) imaging in diagnosing primary and secondary malignant liver tumors. The result manifested that the novel imaging tool had a valuable utility in differentiating primary from secondary malignant liver tumors (AUC: 0.879; sensitivity: 76.9%; specificity: 100%).

Ying Zhao¹, Jiazheng Wang², Zhiwei Shen², Zhongping Zhang², Nan Wang¹, Lihua Chen¹, Dahua Cui¹, Tao Lin¹, Qingwei Song¹, Renwang Pu¹, Bingbing Gao¹, and Ailian Liu^1
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

Previous studies have reported preliminary but promising results that high b‐value DWI has a remarkably high sensitivity in neuro or genitourinary malignancies. However, the value of high b-value DWI in liver remains controversial. In the current study, multiple high b-values DWI - based texture analysis was applied to evaluate tumor heterogeneity in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. The results demonstrated that ultra-high b-value (b = 2000 and 3000 s/mm²) DWI images could offer more information in tumor heterogeneity evaluation compared to the conventional b-value (b = 800 s/mm²) DWI images based on texture analysis in HCC patients.

Lihua Chen¹, Ailian Liu², Jiazheng Wang³, Yishi Wang³, Yaxin Niu², and Qingwei Song^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, DaLian, China, ²The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ³Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The quantitative flow measurements at 4D - flow MRI in the portal system and flow change in response to a meal challenge. Significant increased blood flow velocity and volume were observed in PV and SMV and significantly decreased blood flow was observed in SV after a meal.

Qing Li¹, Shuangshuang Xie¹, Caixin Qiu¹, Jinxia Zhu², Chengwen Liu², and Wen Shen^1
1Tianjin First Central Hospital, Tianjin, China, ²MR Collaboration, Siemens Healthcare, Ltd, Beijing, China

T1 and T2 mapping of rats with 30% and 70% partial hepatectomy (PH) were compared, and trends were similar with some differences, indicating liver changes after PH in the 70% PH group was more active. The results suggested that T1 and T2 mapping are potential to assess liver regeneration after PH.

shuangshuang xie¹, caixin qiu¹, yajie sun¹, qing li¹, jinxia zhu², and wen shen^1
1Tianjin First Center Hospital, Tianjin, China, ²MR Collaboration, Siemens Healthcare, Beijing, China

The value of effective T2 (T2*) relaxation time in monitoring changes in liver arterial blood supply after partial hepatectomy was investigated using a rat model. Ten rats received a 30% hepatectomy, and the other ten received a 70% hepatectomy. Before and after the surgery, all animals underwent T2* mapping at multiple time points. Liver T2* relaxation times were measured and compared between different groups at each time point. The results indicated that T2* relaxation time can be used to monitor changes in liver arterial blood supply after partial hepatectomy.

Fabio Nery¹, Iosif Mendichovszky², Pim Pullens³, Ilona Dekkers⁴, Octavia Bane⁵, Andreas Pohlmann⁶, Anneloes de Boer⁷, Alexandra Ljimani⁸, Aghogho Odudu⁹, Charlotte Buchanan¹⁰, Kanishka Sharma¹¹, Christoffer Laustsen¹², Anita Harteveld⁷, Xavier Golay¹³, Ivan Pedrosa¹⁴, David Alsop¹⁵, Sean Fain¹⁶, Anna Caroli¹⁷, Pottumarthi Prasad¹⁸, Susan Francis¹⁰, Eric Sigmund¹⁹, Maria Fernández‐Seara²⁰, and Steven Sourbron^21
1Developmental Imaging and Biophysics Section, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London, UK, London, United Kingdom, ²Department of Radiology, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom, ³Department of Radiology, Ghent University Hospital and Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, ⁴Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, ⁵Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute and Department of Radiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, ⁶Berlin Ultrahigh Field Facility, Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany, ⁷Department of Radiology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, ⁸Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Medical Faculty, University Dusseldorf, 40225, Dusseldorf, Germany, ⁹Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, ¹⁰Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ¹¹Imaging Biomarkers Group, Department of Biomedical, Imaging Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom, ¹²Department of Clinical Medicine, MR Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, ¹³Brain Repair and Rehabilitation, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ¹⁴Department of Radiology, Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States, ¹⁵Department of Radiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ¹⁶Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Radiology, and Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States, ¹⁷Department of Biomedical Engineering, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Bergamo, Italy, ¹⁸Department of Radiology, Center for Advanced MR Research, NorthShore University Health System, Evanston, IL, United States, ¹⁹Department of Radiology, Center for Biomedical Imaging (CBI), Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research (CAI2R), NYU Langone Health, New York, NY, United States, ²⁰Department of Radiology, Clínica Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, ²¹Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

The field of renal MRI has undergone significant developments over the last decade. However, the lack of standardisation of acquisition and analysis methods remains an important barrier to clinical translation. We present a consensus project initiated through the Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action PARENCHIMA whereby a group of renal MRI experts employed a Delphi-based approach to develop technical recommendations for renal T₁ and T₂ mapping, arterial spin labelling, diffusion-weighted imaging and blood oxygenation level-dependent MRI. These will promote standardisation of renal MRI protocols and thus facilitate clinical translation and comparison of data across sites.

Charlotte E Buchanan¹, Fabio Nery², Andrew Priest³, Eleanor F Cox¹, Joao Sousa⁴, Michael Nation⁵, Iosif Mendichovszky³, Steven Sourbron⁶, David Thomas^2,7, and Susan T Francis^1
1Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ²Developmental Imaging and Biophysics Section, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ³Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom, ⁴Imaging Biomarkers Group, Department of Biomedical Imaging Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom, ⁵Kidney Research UK, Peterborough, United Kingdom, ⁶Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom, ⁷Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

We have performed an intra-individual, inter-vendor comparison of renal T₁ and BOLD T₂* measures using predominantly product sequences. Renal T₂* is sensitive to dephasing due to background magnetic field gradients, the degree of which differs across the MR vendors. A strong B₀ L-R gradient, especially prominent for one vendor, leads to an asymmetry in T₂* values between kidneys. B₁ maps vary across subjects with no vendor-specific bias. Renal cortex T₁ values computed using a 2-parameter fit were shown to systematically vary across vendors; a 3-parameter fit reduced this bias but differences remain. This highlights areas of future development for standardisation.

Hanjing Kong¹, Weizheng Gao¹, Fei Gao¹, Chengyan Wang², Xiaodong Zhang¹, Min Yang¹, Xiaoying Wang³, and Jue Zhang^1
1Peking University, Beijing, China, ²Fudan University, Shanghai, China, ³Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China

Early diagnosis of acute kidney injury (AKI) has clinical importance. Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) imaging and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) showed its priority in diagnosis of AKI in the early phase. However, the reproducibility of these methods remains unknown.  In this study, we present repeated measurements of the DWI and BOLD renal MR imaging and further compared the quantitative results in terms of reproducibility.

Weizheng Gao¹, Hanjing Kong¹, Chengyan Wang², Xiaodong Zhang¹, Min Yang¹, Xiaoying Wang^3,4, and Jue Zhang^1
1Peking University, Beijing, China, ²Fudan University, Shanghai, China, ³Department of Radiology, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China, ⁴Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China

Recent studies have demonstrated that a novel MRI imaging sequence termed psMASE, together with hemodynamic response imaging, is able to effectively distinguish different severities of acute renal injury. In this study, we performed repeated scanning to verify the repeatability of the psMASE strategy.

Qiang Liu¹, Zhongbiao Xu², Xinyuan Zhang¹, Zhifeng Chen¹, Rongli Zhang³, Yaohui Wang⁴, Kaixuan Zhao¹, Ed X. Wu^5,6, and Yanqiu Feng^1
1School of Biomedical Engineering, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, ²Department of Radiotherapy, Cancer Center, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital & Guangdong Academy of Medical Science, Guangzhou, China, ³School of Medicine, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital , South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, ⁴Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, ⁵Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China, ⁶Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

This work aimed to improve rat kidney diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) by using interleaved multishot echo planar imaging (EPI) with 2D navigators. The data of shots were combined to reconstruct the final images by using the IRIS processing pipeline. The in vivo rat imaging results show that the multishot EPI approach obtained renal diffusion-weighted images with higher resolution and less geometric distortion, compared single-shot EPI. The DWI of rat kidney can be significantly improved by 2D navigated multishot EPI.

Yuki Koshino¹, Naoki Ohno², Tosiaki Miyati², Tetsuo Ogino³, Yu Ueda³, Naoki Hori¹, Yukihiro Matsuura¹, Toshifumi Gabata⁴, and Satoshi Kobayashi^1,2,4
1Radiology Division, Kanazawa University Hospital, Ishikawa, Japan, ²Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Medical, Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan, ³Philips Japan, Tokyo, Japan, ⁴Department of Radiology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Ishikawa, Japan

To investigate the potential benefit of second-order motion compensated (2^nd-MC) diffusion encoding scheme on intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) analysis of the kidney, we compared the IVIM diffusion parameters and repeatability between the 2^nd-MC and conventional diffusion gradients. Our results showed that the 2^nd-MC diffusion gradients show better fitting accuracy and repeatability of IVIM diffusion parameters of the kidney compared with the conventional diffusion gradients. Therefore, the 2^nd-MC diffusion encoding scheme could enable us to reduce the bulk motion effect mainly caused by cardiac and respiratory motion during diffusion sensitization.

Ahmad Alhulail^1,2, Mahsa Servati^1,3, Nathan Ooms^1,3, Oguz Akin⁴, Alp Dincer^5,6, M. Albert Thomas⁷, Ulrike Dydak^1,3, and Uzay E Emir^1,8
1School of Health Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States, ²Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging, Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia, ³Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, United States, ⁴Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, United States, ⁵Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, Istanbul, Turkey, ⁶Center for Neuroradiological Applications and Research, Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydinlar University, Istanbul, Turkey, ⁷Department of Radiology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁸Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States

MRS could be useful for characterization of the renal cell carcinoma by detecting lipid content. However, single-voxel MRS cannot show the distribution of lipids for heterogeneous tumors. We propose a fast MRSI sequence to map the distribution of lipid metabolites within a clinically acceptable time frame at 3T. The proposed MRSI technique provided high-quality data with reproducible quantitative outputs. The coefficient of variance for the quantified fat fraction was less than 1%.

Jingjun Wu¹, Ailian Liu¹, Jiazheng Wang², Zhongping Zhang², Dahua Cui¹, Lihua Chen¹, Qingwei Song¹, Renwang Pu¹, and Bingbing Gao^1
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The reverse gradient technique showed equal fat suppression efficiency and higher SNR and CNR when compared to the RF inversion method in liver DWI, while the measured ADC values were consistent among the two. Chemical shift artifacts remain problematic in abdominal diffusion imaging due to the challenges in B0 field shimming, and the adoption of the optimal fat suppression technique for different application scenarios is important to balance between fat suppression, SNR, and ADC accuracy.

Jingjun Wu¹, Ailian Liu¹, Jiazheng Wang², Xiaofang Xu², Dahua Cui¹, Lihua Chen¹, Qingwei Song¹, Renwang Pu¹, and Bingbing Gao^1
1Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

When compared to SENSE 2, a clinical routine kidney T2WI protocol and hence the golden standard in this study, CS-SENSE with a 75% higher acceleration factor achieved comparable image quality, both qualitatively and quantitatively, while approximately halved the imaging time. CS-SENSE with acceleration factor 3.5 has the potential to replace the 2 fold SENSE acceleration as a clinical routine to increase patient comfort and throughput, which is especially beneficial for ultra-high resolution acquisitions which normally demands extended imaging time.

Xiao-dong Zheng¹, Shi-hong Li¹, Guang-wu Lin¹, Cai-xia Fu², and Bernd Kühn^3
1Department of Radiology, Hua Dong Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, ²MR Application Development, Siemens Shenzhen Magnetic Resonance Ltd., Shenzhen, China, ³MR Application Predevelopment, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

In this study, we aimed to compare the renal blood flow (RBF) values obtained with the 3D Turbo Gradient Spin Echo (TGSE) pCASL sequence with glomerular filtration rates (GFRs) measured using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) for nuclide nephro-dynamic imaging to assess renal perfusion in patients with diabetic nephropathy. Our study demonstrated that the RBF values were well correlated with GFR, indicating that the 3D-TGSE pCASL sequence could be used as an alternative - method for the prediction of early diabetic nephropathy.

Lijuan Sun¹, Qingwei Song¹, Meiyu Sun¹, Dianxiu Ning¹, Nan Zhang¹, Nan Wang¹, Jiazheng Wang², and Liangjie Lin^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

The compressed sensing (CS) technique, which implements k-space sparses ampling and iterative reconstruction algorithm, has now been widely used in acceleration of MR examinations of various anatomies and anatomical contrasts. This study aims to explore the performance of 3D water-fact imaging accelerated using a combination of compressed-sensing and sensitivity encoding on kidney of healthy subjects. Several acceleration factors of the proposed technique were compared against the traditional sensitivity-encoding technique and an acceleration factor of 2 was recommended for a balance between imaging time and image quality.

Nan Wang¹, Ailian Liu¹, Jiazheng Wang², Zhiwei Shen², Qingwei Song¹, Renwang Pu¹, Bingbing Gao¹, and Lihua Chen^1
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

MRI imaging is a radiographic imaging technology widely used in human body. The application of MRI at the molecular level had became a hot research topic in the near future. 3D amide proton transfer weighted(APTw) MR imaging is a new contrast-agent-free MRI technique that addresses the need for a more confident diagnosis in oncology^[1,2]. The APTw was widely used in the nervous system. Recently, The APTw was gradually applied to the abdomen^[3,4]. At present, there is no related research reported on renal APT imaging.

Steffen Ringgaard¹ and Anne Dorte Blankholm^2
1MR Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, ²Department of Radiology, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark

When doing arterial spin labeling perfusion measurements in the kidneys, respiratory motion is an important issue. We compared different methods for doing retrospective motion correction of single-shot ASL images. We evaluated the temporal signal variation in the cortex after correction by translation, translation+rotation and affine transformation and found that the variation was lowest when using full affine correction. Besides, we also compared different similarity measures as used during the motion correction.

Junyu Guo¹ and Ivan Pedrosa^1
1Radiology, UT southwestern medical center, Dallas, TX, United States

Image segmentation is important for quantitative analysis in many medical applications. Although deep learning methods generate segmentation with high accuracy, the model has to be trained for different organs and image modalities. These training processes are very time-consuming and labor-intensive because of the requirements of drawing masks manually. In this project, we present a dual neural network method trained using one set of 3D MRI data from a single subject. We demonstrate the feasibility of using a single 3D dataset to train a dual neural network for kidney segmentation, which greatly reduce the burden of drawing masks for large datasets.

Lucille E Anzia¹, Cody J Johnson¹, Diego Hernando¹, Wade A Bushman², Shane A Wells¹, and Alejandro Roldán-Alzate^3
1Radiology, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Urology, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Previous anatomic studies of the lower urinary tract predominantly utilize ultrasound and computed tomography. We present a novel method for measuring bladder wall volume (BWV), bladder wall thickness (BWT) and prostate volume (PV) using 30 (14 male) patients aged 30-39. Through MRI segmentation of the bladder and prostate in Mimics software, 3D models were quantified for BWV and PV. 3-matic was used to measure BWT. There were no significant differences in BWV or BWT between males and females (p=0.52,0.25). Mean PV was 28.7cm³ (16.7-47.8cm³). Non-significant variations in BWT were observed regionally. Future directions will use this methodology across age groups.