Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) encompasses a spectrum of diseases extending from simple steatosis to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Currently, there is a pressing unmet clinical need to develop an effective non-invasive method to differentiate between different types of NAFLD and to support the initiation and monitoring of treatments designed to slow or halt progression of the disease.~Field-cycling imaging (FCI) is an innovative imaging technology pioneered at the University of Aberdeen. It has the ability to image human tissues non-invasively over a wide range of magnetic field strengths, directly informing on multi-scale tissue structure from nanometres to micrometres. This is not possible with traditional MRI. The potential of FCI in imaging NAFLD is particularly promising, due to its high sensitivity in quantifying and distinguishing protein content from fat.~The purpose of this pilot study is exploring whether FCI may be able to detect characteristics of liver disease, in patients with different degree of steatohepatitis and NAFLD, that could be important in reflecting progression of steatosis to liver fibrosis and HCC thereby potentially offering new diagnostic information that cannot be readily obtained with currently available imaging techniques.
The goal of this pilot study is exploring whether field-cycling imaging may be able to detect characteristics of liver disease in patients with different degree of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) that could be important in reflecting disease progression.