Chronic liver diseases, including viral infections such as the hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or alcoholic liver diseases, represent a major public health problem that often leads to morbidity and mortality (1,2). Because chronic liver diseases often lead to liver injuries that cause fibrogenesis and necroinflammation, liver fibrosis, which ultimately develops into cirrhosis, can occur (3). Among the various causes that were shown to lead to liver cirrhosis, hepatitis B virus was reported to be the most common in Asia...

Liver MR elastography examinations were performed in 539 patients as part of their preoperative MR imaging work-up within 3 months before surgery by using a 1.5-T MR unit (Signa HDx; GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, Wis) equipped with MR elastography hardware. In addition, 121 consecutive living liver donors underwent preoperative MR examinations, including MR elastography, for liver transplantations. We excluded 20 patients who met one or more of the following exclusion criteria: chronic liver disease with combined etiologic causes such as hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C...

In 47 of the 539 patients and six of the 121 donors (8.0%; 53 of 660) who underwent MR elastography within 3 months before surgery, MR elastography examinations were classified as technical failures; thus, the technical success rate of MR elastography was 92.0% (607 of 660). Mean age was significantly higher in patients without CHB (P , .001); however, other epidemiologic factors, including sex and body mass index, were not significantly different (Table 1). According to the histopathologic evaluation of liver fibrosis, in the part...

Our study results demonstrated that MR elastography showed excellent performance for assistance in determining the liver fibrosis stage in both patients with hepatitis B virus infections andin patients with chronic liver diseases from other etiologic causes, and that LS values from MR elastography demonstrated good correlation with the pathologic liver fibrosis stage of the liver specimen. These results regarding the diagnostic accuracy of MR elastography and LS values in patients both without and with CHB are in good accordance with the results of other studies...

1)Blachier M, Leleu H, Peck-Radosavljevic M, Valla D-C, Roudot-Thoraval F. The burden of liver disease in Europe: a review of available epidemiological data. J Hepatol 2013; 58(3):593–608. 3. Schuppan D, Afdhal NH. Liver cirrhosis. Lancet 2008;371(9615):838–851. 4. Cardoso AC, Carvalho-Filho RJ, Stern C, et al. Direct comparison of diagnostic performance of transient elastography in patients with chronic hepatitis B and chronic hepatitis C. Liver Int 2012;32(4):612–621. 5. D’Amico G, Garcia-Tsao G, Pagliaro L. Natural history and prognostic indicators of survival in cirrhosis: a systematic review...