3D Hepatic MR Elastography at 0.55T

Motivation: Expanding hepatic 3D MRE to wide-bore low field MR systems (B0 ≤ 1.0T) can serve as a means of accommodating liver patients with high BMI and/or claustrophobia such as metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) patients. Goal(s): Demonstrate the feasibility of 3D MRE at 0.55T in healthy volunteers. Approach: 5 healthy volunteers were scanned at 60Hz mechanical excitation with a Hadamard-encoded 3D MRE sequence at 0.55T and were also scanned with a reference 3D MRE sequence at 3T for comparison. Results: Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated good agreement between the biomechanical parameters retrieved at 0.55T and 3T. Impact: We demonstrated the feasibility of hepatic 3D MRE at 0.55T in healthy volunteers, which paves the pathway for an MRE clinical study in MAFLD patients to evaluate clinical added value.