MRI-derived quantification of hepatic vessel-to-volume ratios in chronic liver disease using a deep learning approach

作者：Alexander Herold, Daniel Sobotka, Lucian Beer, Nina Bastati, Sarah Poetter‐Lang, Michael Weber, Thomas Reiberger, Mattias Mandorfer, Georg Semmler, Benedikt Simbrunner, Barbara Wichtmann, Sami A Ba-Ssalamah, Michael Trauner, Ahmed Ba‐Ssalamah, Georg Langs · 发表于：European Radiology Experimental · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s41747-025-00612-y · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment、Liver Disease and Transplantation、Organ Transplantation Techniques and Outcomes

BACKGROUND: We aimed to quantify hepatic vessel volumes across chronic liver disease stages and healthy controls using deep learning-based magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis, and assess correlations with biomarkers for liver (dys)function and fibrosis/portal hypertension. METHODS: We assessed retrospectively healthy controls, non-advanced and advanced chronic liver disease (ACLD) patients using a 3D U-Net model for hepatic vessel segmentation on portal venous phase gadoxetic acid-enhanced 3-T MRI. Total (TVVR), hepatic (HVVR), and intrahepatic portal vein-to-volume ratios (PVVR) were compared between groups and correlated with: albumin-bilirubin (ALBI) and "model for end-stage liver disease-sodium" (MELD-Na) score) and fibrosis/portal hypertension (Fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) Score, liver stiffness measurement (LSM), hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG), platelet count (PLT), and spleen volume. RESULTS: We included 197 subjects, aged 54.9 ± 13.8 years (mean ± standard deviation), 111 males (56.3%): 35 healthy controls, 44 non-ACLD, and 118 ACLD patients. TVVR and HVVR were highest in controls (3.9; 2.1), intermediate in non-ACLD (2.8; 1.7), and lowest in ACLD patients (2.3; 1.0) (p ≤ 0.001). PVVR was reduced in both non-ACLD and ACLD patients (both 1.2) compared to controls (1.7) (p ≤ 0.001), but showed no difference between CLD groups (p = 0.999). HVVR significantly correlated indirectly with FIB-4, ALBI, MELD-Na, LSM, and spleen volume (ρ ranging from -0.27 to -0.40), and ...