Quantification of liver fat using magnetic resonance imaging

Sood, Rewa

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/97884 Copy

Description

Title

Quantification of liver fat using magnetic resonance imaging

Author(s)

Sood, Rewa

Issue Date

2017-12

Keyword(s)

• magnetic resonance imaging
• liver fat quantification

Abstract

Currently, the gold standard for quantifying the fraction of the liver that is composed of fat is liver biopsy. A liver biopsy is a painful and uncomfortable procedure where the patient’s liver is sampled using a large needle. In addition, the liver biopsy only samples a small area of the liver, which may not accurately represent the fat content in the entire liver. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides an alternative, non-invasive, technique for the quantification of liver fat that is faster, more representative, and more comfortable for the patient. The goal of this project is to create a MATLAB program that reads in DICOM MRI images corresponding to each echo and produces a proton density fat fraction (PDFF) map of the liver. The initial solution to this problem was to create our own function in MATLAB that would provide the necessary map. However, our method would not converge. The second approach involved using lsqcurvefit, a built-in MATLAB function, which provided nonlinear curve-fitting functionality and allowed construction of accurate PDFF maps. The new code creates a GUI that shows the percent of fat in different parts of the liver provided six echo images and their associated echo times. As a result of this work, a researcher would be able to generate the PDFF map to extract fat quantification values for acquired liver images.

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97884

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