Diffuse Liver Disease: Measurements of Liver Trace Metal Concentrations and R2* Relaxation Rates

• IntroductionOver the past decade, several methods for measuring of liver iron content (LIC) non-invasively with MRI have been developed and verified. The most promising methods uses relaxometry, measuring either R2- or R2* relaxation rate in the liver1,2. For instance, several studies have shown that there seems to be a linear relationship between R2* and LIC1. However, few of these studies have measured the liver content of other metals, which could also affect the relaxation rates. The goal of this study was to investigate if any trace metals, other than iron could affect the R2* relaxation rate in liver tissue in a patients with diffuse liver disease.Subjects and methods75 patients with suspected diffuse liver disease underwent an MRI examination followed by a liver biopsy the same day. The R2* relaxation rate of the water protons in the liver was measured using an axial 3D multi-slice fat-saturated multi-echo turbo field echo sequence (TE=4.60/9.20/13.80/18.40/23.00ms). Regions of interest (ROI) were drawn and R2* was estimated by fitting the mean signal intensity from the ROIs to a mono-exponential decay model. The biopsies were freeze dried and the concentrations of iron, manganese, copper, cobalt and gadolinium were measured using Inductively Coupled Plasma Sector Field Mass Spectrometry (ICP-SFMS). A multiple linear regression analysis was applied to determine which of the measured metals significantly affected the relaxation rate.ResultsA linear regression with the LIC and R2* showed a reasonable fit (Figure 1). The multiple linear regression analysis (Table 1) showed that iron as well as manganese had a significant affect on R2*. Unlike iron however, the regression coefficient of manganese was negative, meaning that an increasing manganese concentration gave a shorter R2* relaxation rate. The same trend can be seen when plotting the manganese concentration against R2* (Figure 2).

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MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Radiologi och bildbehandling (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Medicinteknik -- Medicinsk laboratorie- och mätteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Medical Engineering -- Medical Laboratory and Measurements Technologies (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Vattenteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Water Engineering (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Farmaceutiska vetenskaper (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Pharmaceutical Sciences (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Materialteknik -- Metallurgi och metalliska material (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Materials Engineering -- Metallurgy and Metallic Materials (hsv//eng)

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