Quantifying liver fibrosis through the application of texture analysis to diffusion weighted imaging

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential utility of texture analysis of parametric apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps in quantifying hepatic fibrosis. To this end, using ex vivo murine liver tissues from a dietary model of hepatic fibrosis, an array of texture analysis techniques, including histogram-based, gray-level co-occurrence matrix-based, and gray-level run-length-based features, was used to evaluate correlations with liver fibrosis. Moderate to very strong correlation between several of the texture-based features and both subjective as well as digital image analysis-based assessments of hepatic fibrosis was demonstrated. This rigorous study of texture analysis applied to parametric ADC maps in a liver fibrosis model study demonstrates and validates the potential utility of texture-based features for the noninvasive, quantitative assessment of hepatic fibrosis.