title: Biliary tract depiction in living potential liver donors at 3.0-T magnetic resonance cholangiography.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To prospectively evaluate accuracy of biliary anatomy depiction and quality of biliary tract visualization of magnetic resonance cholangiography (MRC) at 3.0 T in living potential liver donors (LPLDs).
  
  
  METHODS
  Our institutional review board approved this study and did not require patient's informed consent. Thirty-three LPLDs underwent MRC at 3.0-T magnetic resonance and intraoperative cholangiography as the reference standard. MRC protocol included breath-hold rapid acquisition with relaxation enhancement (RARE) and respiratory-triggered 3-dimensional turbo spin-echo (TSE) T2-weighted sequence. Two readers independently analyzed 2 MRC image sets with a 2-week interval for delineating biliary anatomy and scoring degree of visualization of biliary branches with a 4-point scale, and recorded the number of visible third-order branches. One month later, both readers independently evaluated combined both MRC image set to assess biliary anatomy.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Biliary anatomy was correctly depicted by RARE sequence in 28 (84.8%) and 26 LPLDs (78.8%), by TSE sequence in 27 (81.8%) and 26 (78.8%), and by combined both sequences in 27 (81.8%) and 28 (84.8%), for readers 1 and 2, respectively. The mean second-order branch visualization scores for 2 readers were significantly higher for RARE images than for TSE (2.23 vs. 1.68, P = 0.02; 2.05 vs. 1.54, P = 0.02, respectively). The mean numbers of visible third-order branches were significantly higher for RARE images than TSE for both readers (4.36 vs. 3.04, P = 0.03; 4.72 vs. 3.32, P = 0.03, respectively).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In LPLDs, MRC at 3.0 T with both RARE and TSE sequences enables accurate depiction of biliary anatomy. RARE sequence more clearly visualizes second- and third-order biliary branches than TSE sequence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Research Institute of Radiology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: So Yeon
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jae Ho
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Byun
authors.forename: Hye-Suk
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: Eugene K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Seung Soo
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Seong Ho
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Moon-Gyu
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001659:Biliary Tract / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D002758:Cholangiography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016031:Liver Transplantation; D019520:Living Donors; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D011446:Prospective Studies