# Quantifying Body Composition and Liver Disease in Children using Free-Breathing MRI and MRE

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2020 · $626,823

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
More than 13.7 million children in the U.S. are obese, and all are at high risk for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
(NAFLD), which can lead to fibrosis and progress to liver failure. NAFLD is the most common chronic pediatric
liver disease and number one indication for liver transplant in young adults. Accurate assessments of visceral
adipose tissue and hepatic fat and fibrosis are critical to the understanding, early diagnosis, and evaluation of
new treatments for pediatric obesity and NAFLD. However, there is a lack of child-appropriate technologies to
quantify visceral adipose tissue and hepatic fat and fibrosis. Conventional imaging techniques for body
composition involve radiation and do not measure individual adipose tissue compartments. Although liver
biopsy is the gold standard for diagnosis, this procedure is invasive, requires anesthesia and has complications.
Moreover, biopsy findings can be non-specific and suffer from sampling bias and interpretation variability.
Magnetic resonance imaging and elastography (MRI and MRE) are promising non-invasive technologies. MRI
quantifies visceral adipose tissue and hepatic fat. MRE quantifies hepatic fibrosis. MRI and MRE do not require
ionizing radiation or biopsy. However, current MRI/MRE technology is not appropriate for most children and infants
because it requires breath-holding to limit abdominal motion. In young children and infants, breath-holding is not
possible. Even in children who can breath-hold, inconsistency and reduced capacity in breath-holding leads to long
scan times, corrupted images, failed scans, and unreliable results. Although sedation can facilitate breath-holding, it
is associated with negative side effects. As a result, current MRI/MRE technologies typically exclude many children.
To overcome these limitations, the research team created new free-breathing (FB) 3D stack-of-radial MRI
technology to quantify visceral adipose tissue and hepatic fat in children and infants. The research team has also
developed new 2D radial FB-MRE technology to quantify hepatic fibrosis in children. The objectives of this project
are to further develop and evaluate FB-MRI/MRE. The research team will reduce FB-MRI/MRE scan times while
maintaining high image quality, demonstrate a high level of accuracy and precision, validate FB-MRI/MRE results
against biopsy, and test FB-MRI in a population that cannot breath-hold. The research team will leverage
innovations in simultaneous multi-slice imaging, sparsity-constrained tensor image reconstruction, and self-
navigation to: 1) Develop new radial FB-MRI/MRE technologies that quantify visceral adipose tissue and hepatic fat
and fibrosis with rapid scan times (1-2 min) and minimal motion artifacts, 2) Measure the accuracy and precision of
the new FB-MRI/MRE for quantifying these biomarkers, 3) Compare the FB-MRI/MRE biomarkers to liver biopsy
in children with liver disease, and 4) Test new FB-MRI technology in infants. The innovativ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9942154
- **Project number:** 1R01DK124417-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Kara Lynne Calkins
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $626,823
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-05-08 → 2024-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9942154

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9942154, Quantifying Body Composition and Liver Disease in Children using Free-Breathing MRI and MRE (1R01DK124417-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9942154. Licensed CC0.

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