Comparative study of magnetic resonance elastography and T2WI in assessing stiffness of tissue / 中华放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To preliminarily compare accuracy of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) and T2WI in assessing stiffness of tissue.Methods Agar gel phantoms of 23 different concentrations ranging from 0.8％-3.0％ were produced.All the phantoms were examined with MRE and T2 map scanning respectively.After the raw images were processed by using local wavelength estimation (LEF),shear modulus of scan slice was measured,and T2 value of the same slice was measured with GE ADW4.3 workstation.Pearson correlation analysis was used to test the correlation between shear modulus and agar concentration,as well as T2 value and concentration.Rank sum test was used to compare the correlation coefficients of them.Results All the shear modulus and T2 values of the phantoms were successfully obtained,which were (49.1 ± 23.5) kPa and (57.8 ± 21.8) ms respectively.Shear modulus was positively correlated with concentration of agar gel(r1 =0.985,r1 2 =0.970,P ＜ 0.01),while T2 value was negatively correlated with concentration of agar gel (r2 =-0.901,r22 =0.812,P ＜ 0.01).The differences of these two correlation coefficients were statistically significant (Z =5.459,P ＜ 0.01).Conclusion MRE is more accurate to reflect stiffness of tissues relative to T2WI,and shows great clinical prospect.