title: [Functional MR study of hepatic fibrosis].
abstract: The accurate diagnosis and staging of hepatic fibrosis is crucial for treatment and prognosis of liver disease. The current gold standard is liver biopsy, but it cannot be used in population-based screening, and has well known drawbacks if used for monitoring of disease progression or treatment results. Functional MR, as a non-invasive method, is increasingly used in hepatic fibrosis and became the current hot spot. Most recently available functional MR imaging techniques including diffusion weighted imaging, perfusion weighted imaging and MR spectroscopy can detect cirrhosis or fibrosis reasonably accurately. However, to date only MR elastography has been able to stage fibrosis or diagnose mild disease. MR diffusion weighted appears next most promising.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310009, China.
authors.forename: Liu-hong
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Min-ming
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D006801:Humans; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy