Research project

Fatty Acid Composition Quantification in the Liver and Optimization of the used Acquisition and Reconstruction Techniques

In order to discriminate between diseases of the non- alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) spectrum, additionally to the total amount of deposited liver fat, knowledge about the relative fractions of different fatty acids might be valuable. The fatty acids determine the relative areas under peaks of the multi-peak fat spectrum, which can be used to measure their degree of saturation using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

The aim of this project is to develop a method yielding accurate information about the fatty acid composition in the liver using MRI. The technique ought to measure the fraction of unsaturated, mono-unsaturated, poly- unsaturated as well as saturated fat in percent with high enough spatial resolution, such that local changes in the composition can be captured. This not only includes proper post-processing of reconstructed MR contrast images, but also the optimization of the selected acquisition and reconstruction techniques.

Project manager:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Andreas Maier, Dr. Marcel Dominik Nickel

Project participants:
Manuel Schneider, M. Sc.

Keywords:
abdominal MRI; fatty acid composition; liver fat; water-fat quantification

Duration: 1.7.2016 - 30.6.2019

Sponsored by:
Siemens Healthcare GmbH

Contact:
Maier, Andreas
Phone +49 9131 85 27883, Fax +49 9131 85 27270, E-Mail: andreas.maier@fau.de

Publications

Schneider, Manuel ; Lugauer, Felix ; Hoppe, Elisabeth ; Nickel, Dominik ; Dale, Brian M ; Kiefer, Berthold ; Maier, Andreas ; Bashir, Mustafa R: Accuracy of Fatty Acid Quantification using Bipolar Multi-Echo MRI for Varying Numbers of Echoes. In: ISMRM (Ed.) : Proceedings of the Joint Annual Meeting ISMRM-ESMRMB (26th Annual Meeting & Exhibition Paris, France 16.-21.06.2018). 2018, pp 5615.

Schneider, Manuel ; Lugauer, Felix ; Hoppe, Elisabeth ; Nickel, Dominik ; Dale, Brian M ; Kiefer, Berthold ; Maier, Andreas ; Bashir, Mustafa R: Fat Content and Fatty Acid Composition Quantification Using a 3D Stack-of-Radial Trajectory With Adaptive Gradient Calibration. In: ISMRM (Ed.) : Proceedings of the Joint Annual Meeting ISMRM-ESMRMB (26th Annual Meeting & Exhibition Paris, France 16.-21.06.2018). 2018, pp 2773.

Schneider, Manuel ; Lugauer, Felix ; Hoppe, Elisabeth ; Nickel, Dominik ; Dale, Brian M ; Kiefer, Berthold ; Maier, Andreas ; Bashir, Mustafa R: Gradient-Delay-Compensated Radial MRI for Fat Content and Fatty Acid Composition Quantification. In: ISMRM (Ed.) : Proceedings of the ISMRM Workshop on Quantitative Body Imaging (Workshop on Quantitative Body Imaging New Delhi, India 26.-28.03.2018). 2018, pp -.

Schneider, Manuel ; Lugauer, Felix ; Janas, Gemini ; Nickel, Dominik ; Dale, Brian M ; Kiefer, Berthold ; Maier, Andreas ; Bashir, Mustafa R: Repeatability and Reproducibility of a New Method for Quantifying Triglyceride Saturation Using Bipolar Multi-Echo MRI. In: ISMRM (Ed.) : Proceedings of the Joint Annual Meeting ISMRM-ESMRMB (26th Annual Meeting & Exhibition Paris, France 16.-21.06.2018). 2018, pp 536.

Schneider, Manuel ; Lugauer, Felix ; Nickel, Dominik ; Dale, Brian ; Kiefer, Berthold ; Maier, Andreas ; Bashir, Mustafa: Improving the Noise Propagation Behavior of Different Fatty Acid Quantification Techniques using Spectral Denoising. In: International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (Ed.) : Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the ISMRM (ISMRM 25th Annual Meeting & Exhibition Honolulu 22.-27.04.2017). 2017, pp 5195.